
Class _i_/lJ?^3 
Book 0-3 



10 



fopyiightN^ 



COP/RiGHT DEPOSIT. 



BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 
A PORTRAIT 




By permission of the Right Hon, Lord Sackville, G.C M G 



PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS BEAUMONT 
From the original painting at Knole Park 



Beaumont, the Dramatist 

A Portrait 

WITH SOME ACCOUNT 

OF HIS CIRCLE, ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN, 

AND OF HIS ASSOCIATION WITH 

JOHN FLETCHER 



BY 
CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY, LITT.D., LL.D. 

Professor of the English Language and Literature 
in the Uni'versity of California 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1914 



.G3 



Copyright, 1914. by 
The Century Co. 



Published, February, 1914 



MAR ■■! 1914 



X'C. 



€f^ 



■e)Cl,A36 924 6 






ri 
^ 



TO MY WIFE 



PREFACE 

TN this period of resurgent dramatic creativity when 
once more the literature of the stage enthralls the 
public and commands the publisher, it is but natural 
that playwright, play-lover, and scholar alike should 
turn with renewed and enlightened interest to the 
models afforded by our Elizabethan masters of the age 
of gold, to the circumstances of their production and 
the lives of their imperishable authors. Very close to 
Shakespeare stood Beaumont and Fletcher ; but, though 
during the past three centuries books about Shake- 
speare have been as legion and studies of the " twin 
literary heroes " have run into the hundreds, to 
Fletcher as an individual but one book has been de- 
voted, and to Beaumont but one. 

A portrait of either Beaumont or Fletcher demands 
indeed as its counterpart, painted by the same brush 
and with alternating strokes, a portrait of his literary 
partner and friend. But in spirit and in favour the 
twain are distinct. In this book I have tried to pre- 
sent the poetic and compelling personality of Francis 
Beaumont not only as conjoined with, and distin- 
guished from, the personality of Fletcher, but as seen 
against the background of historic antecedents and 
family connections and as tinged by the atmosphere 



PREFACE 

of contemporary life, of social, literary, and theatrical 
environment. No doubt the picture has its imperfec- 
tions, but the criticism of those who know will assist 
one whose only desire is to do Beaumont justice. 

I take pleasure in expressing my indebtedness to the 
authorities of the Bodleian Library and the British 
Museum, to those of the National Portrait Gallery 
(especially Mr. J. D. Milner), to our own Librarian 
of the University of California, Mr. J. C. Rowell, 
for unfailing courtesy during the years in which this 
volume has been in preparation; to Mr. J. C. Schwab, 
Librarian of Yale University, for the loan of rare and 
indispensable sources of information, and to my col- 
league. Professor Rudolph Schevill, for reading proof- 
sheets and giving me many a scholarly suggestion. I 
deplore my inability to include among the illustrations 
carefully made by Emery Walker, of i6 Clifford's 
Inn, a copy of the portrait of Beaumont's friend, Eliza- 
beth, Countess of Rutland, which hangs at Penshurst. 
On account of the recent attempt to destroy by fire 
that time-honored repository of heirlooms as precious 
to the realm as to the family of Sidney, the Lord de 
L'Isle and Dudley has found it necessary to close his 
house to the public. 

Charles Mills Gayley. 

Berkeley, California, 

December 15, 19 13. 



CONTENTS 



PART ONE 

BEAUMONT'S LIFE, HIS ACQUAINTANCES, AND HIS CAREER 
AS POET AND DRAMATIST 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I THE CASTOR AND POLLUX OF ELIZABETHAN 

DRAMA 3 

II BEAUMONT'S FAMILY; HIS EARLY YEARS: GRACE- 

DIEU, OXFORD lO 

III AT THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY; THE 

POEMS ASSIGNED TO THESE EARLIER YEARS . 29 

IV THE VAUX COUSINS AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOT 46 

V FLETCHER'S FAMILY, AND HIS YOUTH .... 62 

VI SOME EARLY PLAYS OF BEAUMONT AND OF 

FLETCHER 72 

VII THE "BANKE-SIDE" AND THE PERIOD OF THE 

PARTNERSHIP 95 

VIII RELATIONS WITH SHAKESPEARE, JONSON, AND 

OTHERS IN THE THEATRICAL WORLD . . . .114 

IX THE "MASQUE OF THE INNER TEMPLE": THE 
PASTORALISTS, AND OTHER CONTEMPORARIES 
AT THE INNS OF COURT 124 

X AN INTERSECTING CIRCLE OF JOVIAL SORT . . 145 

XI BEAUMONT AND SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S DAUGH- 
TER; RELATIONS WITH OTHER PERSONS OF 
NOTE 150 

XII BEAUMONT'S MARRIAGE AND DEATH; THE SUR- 
VIVING FAMILY 172 

XIII THE PERSONALITY, AND THE CONTEMPORARY 



REPUTATION OF BEAUMONT 



190 



XIV TRADITION, AND TRADITIONAL CRITICISM . • . 206 
XV A FEW WORDS OF FLETCHER'S LATER YEARS . 211 



CONTENTS 

PART TWO 
THE COLLABORATION OF BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVI STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM; CRITICAL AP- 
PARATUS 225 

XVII THE DELIMITATION OF THE FIELD 236 

XVIII THE VERSIFICATION OF FLETCHER AND OF 

BEAUMONT 243 

XIX FLETCHER'S DICTION 260 

XX FLETCHER'S MENTAL HABIT 277 

XXI BEAUMONT'S DICTION 281 

XXII BEAUMONT'S MENTAL HABIT 291 

XXIII THE AUTHORSHIP OF THREE DISPUTED PLAYS . 300 

XXIV "THE WOMAN-HATER," AND "THE KNIGHT" . . 307 
XXV THE FIVE CENTRAL PLAYS 332 

XXVI THE LAST PLAY 365 

XXVII THE DRAMATIC ART, PRINCIPALLY OF BEAU- 
MONT 378 

XXVIII DID THE BEAUMONT " ROMANCE " INFLUENCE 

SHAKESPEARE? 386 

XXIX CONCLUSION 395 

APPENDIX 

Table A .419 

^ 420 

" C 421 

" D 422 

" E . . . 423 

INDEX 425 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Portrait of Francis Beaumont .... Frontispiece 



FACING 
PAGE 



The Ruins of Grace-Dieu Nunnery 22 

Ruins of Grace-Dieu 26 

A Priory, Ulveston, Extant in 1730 26 

Thomas Sackville, First Earl of Dorset .... 66 

The Temple 96 

The Globe Theatre, with St. Paul's in the Back- 
ground 104 

Ben Jonson 120 

Francis Bacon 146 

George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, and 

Family 160 

John Selden 170 

The Beaumont of the Nuneham Portrait .... 192 

Michael Drayton 202 

John Fletcher 226 

John Earle, Bishop of Worcester and Salisbury . . 244 

Don Diego Sarmiento, Count Gondomar .... 372 



BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

PART ONE 

Beaumont's life^ his acquaintances, and his 
career as poet and dramatist. 



BEAUMONT, 
THE DRAMATIST 

CHAPTER I 

THE CASTOR AND POLLUX OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 

« A MONG those of our dramatists who either were 
-^^ contemporaries of Shakespeare or came after 
him, it would be impossible to name more than three 
to whom the predilection or the literary judgment 
of any period of our national life has attempted 
to assign an equal rank by his side. In the Argo 
of the Elizabethan drama — as it presents itself to 
the imagination of our own latter days — Shakes- 
peare's is and must remain the commanding figure. 
Next to him sit the twin literary heroes, Beaumont 
and Fletcher, more or less vaguely supposed to be 
inseparable from one another in their works. The 
Herculean form of Jonson takes a somewhat disputed 
precedence among the other princes; the rest of these 
are, as a rule, but dimly distinguished." So, with 
just appreciation, our senior historian of the English 
drama, to-day, the scholarly Master of Peter- 
house. Sir Adolphus Ward himself has, by availing 
of the inductive processes of the inventive and indefati- 

3 



4 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

gable Fleay and his successors in separative criticism, 
contributed not a little to- a discrimination between the 
respective efforts of the " twin literary heroes " who 
sit next Jason ; and who are *' beyond dispute more 
attractive by the beauty of their creations than any 
and every one of Shakespeare's fellow-dramatists." 
But even he doubts whether *' the most successful se- 
ries of endeavours to distinguish Fletcher's hand from 
Beaumont's is likely to have the further result of en- 
abling us to distinguish the mind of either from that 
of his friend." Just this endeavour to distinguish not 
only hand from hand, but mind from mind, is what I 
have had the temerity to attempt. And still not, by 
any means, a barefaced temerity, for my attempt at 
first was merely to fix anew the place of the joint-au- 
thors in the history O'f English comedy ; and it has been 
but imperceptibly that the fascination of the younger 
of them, of Frank Beaumont, the personality of his 
mind as well as of his art, has so grown upon me as 
to compel me to set him before the world as he appears 
to me to be clearly visible. 

In broad outline the figure of Beaumont has been, 
of course, manifest to the vision of poet-critics in the 
past. To none more palpably than to the latest of 
the melodious immortals of the Victorian strain. ** If 
a distinction must be made," wrote Swinburne as early 
as 1875, '* if a distinction must be made between the 
Dioscuri of English poetry, we must admit that Beau- 
mont was the twin of heavenlier birth. Only as Pollux 
was on one side a demigod of diviner blood than Cas- 
tor can it be said that on any side Beaumont was a 
poet of higher and purer genius than Fletcher; but 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER 5 

so much must be allowed by all who have eyes and 
ears to discern in the fabric of their common work a 
distinction without a difference. Few things are 
stranger than the avowal of so great and exquisite a 
critic as Coleridge, that he could trace no faintest 
line of demarcation between the plays which we owe 
mainly to Beaumont and the plays which we owe 
solely to Fletcher. To others this line has always 
appeared in almost every case unmistakable. Were 
it as hard and broad as the line which marks off, for 
example, Shakespeare's part from Fletcher's in The 
Two Noble Kinsmen, the harmony would of course 
be lost which now informs every work of their com- 
mon genius. ... In the plays which we know by evi- 
dence surer than the most trustworthy tradition to be 
the common work of Beaumont and Fletcher there is 
indeed no trace of such incongruous and incompatible 
admixture as leaves the greatest example of romantic 
tragedy ... an unique instance of glorious im- 
perfection, a hybrid of heavenly and other than heav- 
enly breed, disproportioned and divine. But through- 
out these noblest of the works inscribed generally with 
the names of both dramatists we trace on every other 
page the touch of a surer hand, we hear at every turn 
the note of a deeper voice, than we can ever recognize 
in the work of Fletcher alone. Although the beloved 
friend of Jonson, and in the field of comedy his loving 
and studious disciple, yet in that tragic field where his 
freshest bays were gathered Beaumont was the worth- 
iest and the closest follower of Shakespeare. . . . The 
general style of his tragic or romantic verse is as 
simple and severe in its purity of note and regularity 



6 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

of outline as that of Fletcher's is by comparison lax, 
effusive, exuberant. ... In every one of the plays 
common to both, the real difficulty for a critic is not 
to trace the hand of Beaumont, but to detect the touch 
of Fletcher. Throughout the better part of every 
such play, and above all of their two masterpieces, 
Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy, it should be clear 
to the most sluggish or cursory of readers that he has 
not to do with the author of Valentinian [Fletcher] 
and The Double Marriage [Fletcher and Massinger]. 
In those admirable tragedies the style is looser, more 
fluid, more feminine. . . . But in those tragic poems 
of which the dominant note is the note of Beaumont's 
genius a subtler chord of thought is sounded, a deeper 
key of emotion is touched, than ever was struck by 
Fletcher. The lighter genius is palpably subordinate 
to the stronger, and loyally submits itself to the im- 
pression of a loftier spirit. It is true that this dis- 
tinction is never grave enough to produce a discord; 
it is also true that the plays in which the predominance 
of Beaumont's mind and style is generally perceptible 
make up altogether but a small section of the work 
that bears their names conjointly; but it is no less true 
that within this section the most precious part of that 
work is comprised." 

The essay in which this noble estimate of Beau- 
mont occurs remains indeed '' the classical modern 
criticism of Beaumont and Fletcher," and although 
recent research has resulted in " variety of opinion 
concerning the precise authorship of some of the plays 
commonly attributed to those writers " its value is 
substantially unaffected. The figure as revealed in 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER 7 

glorious proportions to the penetrative imagination 
and the sympathy of poetic kinship, remains, but by 
the patient processes of scientific research the outhnes 
have been more sharply defined and the very linea- 
ments of Beaumont's countenance and of Fletcher's, 
too, brought, I think, distinctly before us. Though 
Swinburne attributes, almost aright, to Beaumont 
alone one play. The Woman-Hater, and ascribes to 
him the predominance in, and the better portions of 
Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy, and the high inter- 
est and graduated action of the serious part oi A King 
and No King, and also' justly associates him with 
Fletcher in the composition of The Scornful Lady, and 
gives him alone *^ the admirable study of the worthy 
citizen and his wife who introduced to the stage and 
escort with their applause The Knight of the Burning 
Pestle,'' and implies his predominance in that play, he 
does not enumerate for us the acts and scenes and 
parts of scenes which are Beaumont's or Fletcher's, or 
Beaumont's revised by Fletcher, in any of these plays; 
and consequently he points us to no specific lines of 
poetic inspiration, no movements distinctively con- 
ceived by either dramatist and shaped by his dramatic 
pressure, no touchstone by which the average reader 
may verify for himself that " to Beaumont his stars 
had given as birthright the gifts of tragic pathos and 
passion, of tender power and broad strong humour," 
and that " to Fletcher had been allotted a more fiery 
and fruitful force of invention, a more aerial ease and 
swiftness of action, a more various readiness and full- 
ness of bright exuberant speech." Though he is right 
in discerning in the homelier emotion and pathetic 



8 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

interest of The Coxcomb, and of Cupid's Revenge 
the note of Beaumont's manner, he couples with the 
former The Honest Man's Fortune in which it is 
more than doubtful whether Beaumont had any share. 
To speak of Arbaces in A King and No King as 
Beaumont's, is mainly right, but not wholly, and to 
assign to him the keen prosaic humour of Bessus and 
his swordsmen, is to assign precisely the scenes that 
he did not compose. To speak of Beaumont's Tri- 
umph of Love is perhaps defensible; but, with grave 
reluctance, we now question the attribution. He is 
justified in withdrawing '' the noble tragedy of 
Thierry and Theodoret" from the field of Beaumont's 
cooperation and ascribing it to Fletcher and Massinger ; 
but he is undoubtedly wrong when he fails to couple 
the latter's name with that of Fletcher as author of 
Valentinian. Writing as Swinburne did after a study 
of Fleay's first investigations into the versification 
of Fletcher, Beaumont, and Massinger, the wonder 
is not that once or twice, as a critic, he makes an 
incorrect attribution, but that his poetic instinct so 
successfully defied the temptation to enumerate in 
detail the respective contributions of Beaumont and 
Fletcher on the basis of metrical tests par excellence, — 
so surprisingly novel and seductively convincing were 
the tests then recently formulated. Swinburne's mis- 
takes are of sane omission rather than of superero- 
gation. By his judgments as a critic one can not 
always swear; but here he is, in the main, marvel- 
ously right, and a thousand times rather to be fol- 
lowed than some of the successors of Fleay who have 
swamped the personality of Beaumont by heaping on 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER 9 

him, foundered, sods from a dozen turf-stacks which 
he never helped to build. 

But the chorizontes — those who' would separate 
every scene and line of the one genius from those of 
the other — are not lightly to be spoken of. It is only 
by combining their methods of analysis with the in- 
tuitions of the poet-critics that one may hope to see 
Frank Beaumont plain : " the worthiest and closest 
follower of Shakespeare in the tragic field ; the earliest 
as well as ablest disciple of Ben Jonson in pure com- 
edy, varied with broad farce and mock-heroic parody." 
The labour is well bestowed if by its means lovers of 
poetry and the drama, while not ceasing to admire 
the elder dramatist, Fletcher, may be led to accede 
at last to the younger his due and undivided honour, 
may come to speak of him by unhyphenated name — 
a personality of passion and of fire, a gracious power 
in poetry, of effulgent dramatic creativity; — if, like 
the ancients, they may protest occasionally in the name 
of Pollux alone. 



CHAPTER II 

Beaumont's family; his early years: grace-dieu, 

OXFORD 

FRANCIS BEAUMONT, the dramatist, came of 
the younger line of an ancient and distinguished 
family of Anglo-Norman descent in which there had 
been Barons de Beaumont from the beginning of the 
fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century. 
They lived, as did the dramatist later, in the forest of 
Charnwood in Leicestershire, — part of the old forest 
of Arden. And it is of a ride to their family seat that 
John Leland, the antiquary, speaks when in his itin- 
erary, written between 1535 and 1543, he says: 
" From Leicester to Brodegate, by ground well 
wooded three miles. . . . From Brodegate to Lough- 
borough about a five miles. . . . First, I came out of 
Brodegate Park into the forest of Charnwood, com- 
monly called the Waste. This great forest is a twenty 
miles or more in compass, having plenty of wood. . . . 
In this forest is no good town nor scant a village; 
Ashby-de-la-Zouche, a market town and other villages 
on the very borders of it. . . . Riding a little further 
I left the park of Beau Manor, closed with stone walls 
and a pretty lodge in it, belonging of late to Beau- 
monts. . . . There is a fair quarry of alabaster stone 
about a four miles from Leicester, and not very far 

10 



HIS FAMILY AND CONNECTIONS ii 

from Beau Manor. ^ . . . There was, since the Belle- 
monts [Beaumonts], earls of Warwick, a baron 
[at Beaumanoir] of great lands of that name; and the 
last of them in King Henry the Seventh's time was a 
man of simple wit. His wife was after married to the 
Earl of Oxford." ^ These barons " of great lands," 
living in Charnwood Forest, — where, as another old 
writer tells us, '* a wren and a squirrel might hop from 
tree to tree for six miles ; and in summer time a trav- 
eler could journey from Beaumanoir to Burden, a good 
twelve miles, without seeing the sun," — these barons 
are the de Beaumonts, from the fourth of whom, 
John, Lord Beaumont, who died in 1396, our drama- 
tist was descended. 

The barony ran from father to son for six genera- 
tions of alternating Henries and Johns, c. 1309 to 1460. 
John, fourth Baron, was grandson of Alianor, daugh- 
ter of Henry, Earl of Lancaster, and so descended 
from. Henry III and the first kings of the House of 
Plantagenet. The second Baron, husband of Alianor 
of Lancaster, was through his mother, Alice Comyn, 
descended from the Scotch Earls of Buchan, and thus 
connected with the Balliols and the royal House of 
Scotland; through his father, Henry, the first Baron 
de Beaumont, who died in 1343, he was great-grand- 
son of John de Brienne, titular King of Jerusalem, 
1210-1225.^ In a quaint tetrastich in the church of 
Barton-upon-Humber, the memory of these alliances is 
thus preserved : 

iLeland's Itinerary, Ed. L. T. Smith, Vol. I, 18-19. 

2 Leland's Itinerary, Ed. L. T. Smith, Vol. IV, 126. 

3 Collins, Peerage of England, IX, 460. 



12 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Rex Hierosolymus cum Bellomonte locatur, 
Bellus mons etiam cum Baghan consociatur, 
Bellus mons iterum Longicastro religatur, 
Bellus mons . . . Oxonie titulatur.^ 

The sixth Baron became, in 1440, the first Viscount 
of English creation ; he married a granddaughter of the 
Lord Bardolph of Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV; but with 
his son "of simple wit," who died in 1507, the vis- 
county died out. Beaumanoir to the east of Charn- 
wood is seven miles north of Leicester and nine from 
Coleorton where, west of the Forest, an older branch 
of the Beaumont family of which we shall hear, later, 
continued to live and is living to-day; and the old 
barony was revived, in 1840, in a descendant of the 
female line, Miles Thomas Stapleton, as ninth Baron 
Beaumont. 

The grandfather of the dramatist, John Beaumont, 
was in the third generation from Sir Thomas Beau- 
mont, the younger son of the fourth Lord Beaumont. 
John evidently had to make his way before he could 
establish himself near the old home in Leicestershire; 
but he must have had some competence and position 
from the first, for he was admitted early, in the reign of 
Henry VHI, a member of the Inner Temple; in 1537 
and 1543 he performed the learned and expensive 
functions of Reader, or exponent of the law in that 
society, and later was elected treasurer or presiding 
officer of the house. He started brilliantly in his 
profession. In 1529 he was counsellor for the cor- 
poration of Leicester; and, by 1539, he had means or 

1 J. Nichols, Collections toward the History of Leicestershire 
{Biblioth. Topogr. Brit., VII, 534). See, below, Appendix, A. 



HIS FAMILY AND CONNECTIONS 13 

influence sufficient to secure for himself the old Nun- 
nery of Grace-Dieu in Charnwood Forest, which, as an 
ecclesiastical commissioner he had four years earlier 
helped to suppress. That he entered into possession, 
however, only with difficulty, is manifest from a letter 
which he wrote in 1538 to Lord Cromwell, enclosing 
£20 as a present and beseeching his lordship's interces- 
sion with the king that he may be confirmed in his 
ownership of the ** demenez " as against the cupidity 
of George, first Earl of Huntingdon, who " doth labour 
to take the seyd abbey fifrom me ; . . . for I do ff eyre 
the seyd erle and hys sonnes do seeke my lyffe." ^ He 
occupied various important legal and administrative 
positions in the county, and, shortly before the death 
of Edward VI, was appointed to the high office of 
Master of the Rolls, or Judge of the Court of Ap- 
peal. A year or two later, however, early in 1553, 
he was removed from his seat on the bench, for 
defalcation and other flagrant breach of trust. He 
was imprisoned and fined in all his property, 
and died the next year. His vast estates were be- 
stowed on Francis, Earl of Huntingdon, by Edward 
VI, but soon afterward, as a result of legal manoeuvre 
and by the assistance of that Earl and his eldest son, 
the widow of the Master of the Rolls contrived to 
retain the manor of Grace-Dieu ; and it long continued 
to be the country seat of the Beaumonts.^ This pru- 
dent, strenuous, and high-born lady, Elizabeth Hast- 

^ Letters relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries, pp. 
251-252, Camden Society, 1843. The editor, Thos. Wright, de- 
scribes the petitioner as of Thringston, Co. Leicester. 

2 J. M. Rigg, Diet, Nat. Biog. art., John Beaumont; and 
Nichols's History of Leicestershire, III, ii, 651, et. seq. 



14 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

ings, was the daughter of Sir William Hastings, a 
younger son of the incorruptible William, Lord Hast- 
ings, whom in 1483 Richard of Gloucester had de- 
capitated. Her grandmother, Catherine Nevil, was 
daughter to the Earl of Salisbury, who died at Pom- 
fret, and sister to Richard, Earl of Warwick, the King- 
maker. Elizabeth's aunt, Anne Hastings, was the wife 
of George Talbot, fourth Earl of Shrewsbury, and her 
uncle, Edward, was the second Lord Hastings. Ed- 
ward's children, our Elizabeth's first cousins, were 
Anne, Countess to Thomas Stanley, second Earl of 
Derby, and that George, first Earl of Huntingdon, 
whom, with certain of his five sons, the master of 
Grace-Dieu " ffeyred." ^ We may conjecture that the 
feud expired with the marriage of Elizabeth Hastings 
and John Beaumont, or with the death of the first Earl 
in 1544; and that the policy of his successors, Francis 
and Henry, in securing to the Huntingdon family the 
reversion of the forfeited estates of the Master of the 
Rolls and, later, releasing a portion of them to Eliza- 
beth, was dictated by cousinly affection. 

The great Francis, second Earl of Huntingdon, lived 
in the castle of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, about an hour's 
w^alk from Mistress Beaumont's, and had, in 1532, 
allied himself to royalty by marrying Katherine Pole, 
niece of the Cardinal, and great-granddaughter of 
that George, Duke of Clarence (brother to Edward 
IV), who was " pack'd with post-horse up to heaven " 
by the cacodemon of Gloucester. When Edward 
VI died, Francis declared for Lady Jane Grey and 

1 Collins, Peerage, VI, 648, et seq.; H. N. Bell, The Hunting- 
don Peerage, 2821. See also, below, Appendix, Table B. 



HIS FAMILY AND CONNECTIONS 15 

was for a time imprisoned. His daughter was 
the beautiful Lady Mary Hastings who, being of 
the blood royal, was wooed for the Czar, and 
might have been " Empress of Muscovy " had she 
pleased. From the Huntingdon family Elizabeth 
Hastings introduced at least one new christian 
name into that of the Beaumonts. For the second 
Earl, she named her oldest son Francis. One of her 
daughters, Elizabeth, became the wife of William, 
third Lord Vaux of Harrowden, in the adjoining 
county of Northampton; and thus our dramatist, 
through his aunt, was connected with another of the 
proudest Norman families of England, — one of the 
most devoted to the Catholic faith and, as we shall see, 
active in Jesuit interests that during the dramatist's 
life in London assumed momentous political propor- 
tions. Aunt Elizabeth, Lady Vaux, died before our 
Frank Beaumont was born; and her son Henry died 
when Frank was but ten years of age, — but in an 
entry in the State Papers of 1595 concerning *' the en- 
tail of Lord Vaux's estates on his children by his first 
wife [John] Beaumont's daughter," ^ several " daugh- 
ters " are mentioned. These, his cousins of Harrow- 
den, Frank knew from his youth up. In 1605 all 
England was to be ringing with their names. 

John and Elizabeth were succeeded at Grace-Dieu 
by their son, Francis. He was a student at Peter- 
house, Cambridge; afterwards, at the Inner Temple, 
where like his father before him, he proceeded Reader 
and Bencher. In 1572 he sat in Parliament as mem- 
ber for Aldborough; in 1589 he was made sergeant- 

^ Calendar of State Papers (Domestic), 1595, p. 154. 



l6 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

at-law; and in 1593 was appointed one of the Queen's 
Justices of the Court of Common Pleas. His method 
of trying a case, technical and merciless, may be 
studied in the minutes of the Lent assizes of 1595 at 
which the unfortunate Jesuit priest, Henry Walpole, 
was sentenced to death for returning to England.^ His 
career on the bench was both successful and honour- 
able ; and he is described by a contemporary, William 
Burton, the author of the Description of Leicestershire, 
as a ' grave, learned, and reverend judge/' He married 
Anne, the daughter of a Nottinghamshire knight, Sir 
George Pierrepoint of Holme-Pierrepoint ; and their 
children were Henry, born 1581; John, born about 
1583; Francis, the subject of this study, born in 1584 
or 1585 ; and Elizabeth, some four years younger than 
Francis.^ That we know nothing of the life or per- 
sonality of this mother of poets, is a source of regret. 
Her family, however, was of a notable stock possessed, 
immediately after the Conquest, of lands in Sussex 
under Earl Warren. Their estate of Holme-Pierre- 
point in Nottinghamshire they had inherited from 
Michael de Manvers during the reign of Edward I. 
Anne's ancestors had been Knights Banneret, and of 
the Carpet and the Sword, for generations. Her 
brother. Sir Henry Pierrepoint, born 1546, married 
Frances, the eldest daughter of the Sir William Cav- 
endish who began the building of Chatsworth, and 

1 Challoner, Missionary Priests, I, 347, 

2 For the preceding details, and some of those which follow, 
see the respective articles in the Dictionary of National Biogra- 
phy; Dyce's Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, Vol. I, Biograph- 
ical Memoir; Grosart, Sir John Beaumont's Poems, and the 
sources as indicated. See also, below, Appendix, Table C. 



HIS FAMILY AND CONNECTIONS 17 

his redoiubtable Lady, Bess of Hardwick, who finished 
it. This aunt of the young Beaumonts of Grace- 
Dieu, Lady Pierrepoint, was sister to William Caven- 
dish, first Earl of Devonshire in 161 1 and fore- 
father of the present Dukes, — to Henry Caven- 
dish, the friend of Mary, Queen of Scots, and 
son-in-law of her kindly custodian, George Talbot, 
sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, — to Sir Charles Caven- 
dish, whose son, William, became Earl, and then 
Duke of Newcastle, — to Elizabeth Cavendish, Countess 
of Lennox, the wife of Henry Darnley's brother, 
Charles Stuart, and the mother of James I's hapless 
cousin. Lady Arabella Stuart, — and to Mary Caven- 
dish, Countess of Shrewsbury, wife of Gilbert, seventh 
Earl. The son of Sir Henry and Lady Pierrepoint, 
Robert, born in the same year as his cousin, Francis 
Beaumont, the dramatist, married a daughter of the 
Talbots, became in due time Viscount Newark and 
Earl of Kingston, and was killed in 1643 during the 
Civil War. From him descended Marquises of Dor- 
chester and Dukes of Kingston, and the Earls Manvers 
of the present time. Through their mother, Anne 
Pierrepoint, the Beaumont children of Grace-Dieu 
were, accordingly, connected with several of the most 
influential noble families of England and Scotland ; and 
in their comradeship with the cousins of Holme-Pierre- 
point they would, as of the common kin, be thrown into 
familiar acquaintance with the children of the various 
branches of these and other houses that I might men- 
tion.^ Holme-Pierpoint is seventeen miles north- 

1 See Shaw's Knights of England; Collins, Peerage; and arti- 
cles in D. N. B. under names. 



i8 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

east of Grace-Dieu, near the city of Nottingham, 
in the red sand-stone country along the River Trent. 
The Park is but a two or three hours' drive from 
Charnwood, and the old house to which Anne used to 
take her children to see their grandparents still stands, 
altered only in part from what it was in 1580. It 
belongs to the Earl Manvers of to-day. In the church 
is the tomb of the poet's uncle, Sir Henry Pierrepoint, 
who died the year before Francis. 

Since no entry of Francis' baptism has been dis- 
covered It is uncertain whether he was born at Grace- 
Dieu. The probabilities are, however, in favour of 
that birth-place, since his father was not continuously 
occupied in London until a later date. As to the exact 
year of his birth, there is also uncertainty but I think 
that the records indicate 1584. The matriculation 
entry in the registers of Oxford University describes 
him as twelve years of age at the time of his admis- 
sion, February 4, 1597 (new style), which would es- 
tablish the date of his birth between February 1584 
and February 1585. The funeral certificate issued at 
the time of his father's death, April 22, 1598, speaks 
of the other children, Henry, John, and EHzabeth as, 
respectively, seventeen, fourteen, and nine, years of 
age, ''*' or thereaboutes "; but of Francis as " of thirteen 
yeares or more/' 

Justice Beaumont was a squire of considerable means. 
When, in 1581, he qualified himself to be Bencher by 
lecturing at the Inner Temple upon some statute or 
section of a statute for the space of three weeks and 
three days, his expenses for the entertainment at 
table or in revels, alone, must have run to about 



GRACE-DIEU 19 

£1500, in the money of to-day. He held at the time 
of his death landed estates in some ten parishes of 
Leicestershire, between Sheepshead on the east and 
and Coleorton three miles away on the west, and scat- 
tered over some seven miles north and south between 
Belton and Normanton. In Derby, too, he had two 
or three fine manors. His will shows that he was able 
to make generous provision for many of his '' ould and 
faythefull servauntes," besides bequeathing specific- 
ally a handsome sum in money to his daughter Eliza- 
beth. He was a considerate and careful man, too, 
for the morning of his death he added a codicil to 
his will : " I have left somewhat oute of my will 
which is this, I will that my daughter Elizabeth have 
all the Jewells that were her mother's." His sons are 
not mentioned, for naturally the heir, Henry, would 
make provision for John and Francis.^ His chief 
executor was Henry Beaumont of Coleorton, his kins- 
man, — worth mentioning here ; for at Coleorton an- 
other cousin, Maria Beaumont, the mother of the 
great Duke of Buckingham, had till recently lived as 
a waiting gentlewoman in the household. 

Grace-Dieu where the youth of these children was 
principally spent, was *' beautifully situated in what 
was formerly one of the most recluse spots in the 
centre of Charnwood Forest," within a little distance 
of the turn-pike road that leads from Ashby-de-la- 

1 Dyce says that the Judge was knighted ; so Rigg {D. N. B.) 
and others. The Inner Temple Records speak of him thirty times, 
but only once, Nov. 5, 1581, as " Sir," though others in memo- 
randa running to 1601 which mention him are given the title. In 
the codicil to his will he is plain " Mr. Beaumont " ; and he is 
not included in Shaw's Knights of England. 



20 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Zouch to Loughborough. It lies low in a valley, near 
the river Soar. In his Two Bookes of Epigrammes 
and Epitaphs, 1639, Thomas Bancroft gives us a pic- 
ture of the spot: 

Grace-Dieu, that under Charnwood stand 'st alone, 

As a grand relicke of religion, 

I reverence thine old, but fruitfull, worth, 

That lately brought such noble Beaumonts forth, 

Whose brave heroicke Muses might aspire 

To match the anthems of the heavenly quire: 

The mountaines crown'd with rockey fortresses, 

And sheltering woods, secure thy happiness 

That highly favoured art (tho' lowly placed) 

Of Heaven, and with free Nature's bounty graced. 

And still another picture of it is painted, a hundred 
and seventy years later by Wordsworth, the friend 
of the Sir George Beaumont who in his day was pos- 
sessed of the old family seat of Coleorton Hall, within 
half an hour's walk of Grace-Dieu: — 

Beneath yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound, 
Rugged and high, of Charnwood's forest ground 
Stand yet, but, Stranger ! hidden from thy view, 
The ivied Ruins of forlorn Grace-Dieu, — 
Erst a religious house, which day and night 
With hymns resounded, and the chanted rite: 
And when those rites had ceased, the Spot gave birth 
To honourable Men of various worth : 
There, on the margin of a streamlet wild, 
Did Francis Beaumont sport, an eager child: 
There, under shadow of the neighboring rocks. 
Sang youthful tales of shepherds and their flocks; 
Unconscious prelude to heroic themes, 
Heart-breaking tears, and melancholy dreams 



GRACE-DIEU 21 

Of slighted love, and scorn, and jealous rage, 
With which his genius shook the buskined stage. 
Communities are lost, and Empires die, 
And things of holy use unhallowed lie ; 
They perish ; — but the Intellect can raise, 
From airy words alone, a Pile that ne'er decays.^ 

So far as the " youthful tales of shepherds " go, 
Wordsworth is probably thinking of the verses of 
Francis' brother, Sir John, which open : 

A shepherdess, who long had kept her flocks 
On stony Charnwood's dry and barren rocks, — 

written long after both brothers had left boyhood 
behind; indeed after Francis was dead; or he is at- 
tributing to our Beaumont a share in Fletcher's Faith- 
full Shepheardesse. Francis, himself, has given us 
nothing of the pastoral vein, save sweet snatches in 
the dramas '^ with which his genius shook the buskined 
stage." 

There is no doubt that from childhood up, the 
brothers and, as I shall later show, their sister Eliza- 
beth breathed an atmosphere of literature and national 
life. At an early age John was sufficiently confessed 
a versifier to be assigned the Prelude to one of the 
nobly patronized Michael Drayton's Divine Poems, 
and there is fair reason for believing that the younger 
brother Francis was writing and publishing verses in 
1602, when he was barely eighteen years of age. 
Their father was going to and fro among the great 
in London who made affairs. The country-side all 
about them was replete with historic memories and 

1 For a Seat in the Groves of Coleorton. 



22 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

inspirations to poetry. In the Grey Friars' at Lei- 
cester, eleven miles south-east, Simon de Montfort 
allied by marriage to the first Anglo-Norman de Beau- 
monts, Earls of Leicester, lay buried. There, too, until 
his ashes were scattered on the waters of the Soar, 
King Richard the Third. In the Blue Boar Inn of that 
" toune," — in our young Beaumont's day, all '' builded 
of tymbre," — this last of the Plantagenets had spent 
the night before the battle of Bosworth. The field it- 
self on which the battle was fought lies but eight 
miles west of Leicester and about nine south of Grace- 
Dieu. No wonder that Francis Beaumont's brother 
John in after days chose Bosworth Field as the sub- 
ject of an heroic poem: 

The Winter's storme of Civill Warre I sing, 
Whose end is crown'd with our etemall Spring; 
Where Roses joyn'd, their colours mixe in one, 
And armies fight no more for England's Throne. 

The Beaumonts were living in the centre of the coun- 
ties most engaged. Three of their predecessors had 
fallen fighting for the red rose, John Beaumont of 
Coleorton and John, Viscount Beaumont, at North- 
ampton in 1460, and a Henry Beaumont at Towton 
in 1461. In his description of the battle, John intro- 
duces by way of simile a reference to what may have 
been a familiar scene about Grace-Dieu: 

Here Stanley and brave Lovell trie their strength . . . 

So meete two bulls upon adjoyning hills 

Of rocky Charnwood, while their murmur fills 

The hollow crags, when striving for their bounds. 

They wash their piercing homes in mutuall wounds. 



GRACE-DIEU 23 

Lovell, himself, was a Beaumont on the mother's side. 
And the poet takes occasion to pay tribute, also, to his 
own most famous ancestor on the grandmother's side, 
the " noble Hastings," first baron, whose cruel execu- 
tion in Richard III, Shakespeare had dramatized more 
than twenty years before John wrote. 

Just south of Charnwood Forest stood, in the day 
of John and Francis, the Manor House in Bradgate 
Park where Lady Jane Grey was born, and where she 
lived from 1549 to 1552 while she was being educated 
by her ambitious father and mother, the Marquis and 
Marchioness of Dorset, " to occupy the towering po- 
sition they felt assured she would sooner or later be 
called to fill" — that of Protestant queen of England. 
Here it was that Roger Ascham, as he tells us in his 
Schoolmaster, after inquiring for the Lady Jane of 
the Marquis and his lady who were out hunting in 
Charnwood Forest, came upon the twelve-year old 
princess in her closet *' reading the Phaedon of Plato 
in Greek, with as much delight as gentlemen read the 
merry tales of Boccaccio." The grandmother of the 
young Beaumonts, who was still alive in 1578, may 
have lived long enough to take our Francis on her 
knee and tell him of the hopes her Protestant kins- 
men of Ashby-de-la-Zouch had fixed upon the Lady 
Jane, and of how her cousin, the Earl, Francis of 
Huntington, had been one of those who in Royal 
Council in June 1553, abetted the Dukes of North- 
umberland and Suffolk in the scheme to secure 
the succession of Lady Jane to the throne, and 
how, with these dukes and the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, and other lords and gentlemen (among 



24 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

them a certain Sir John Baker of Sissinghurst, Kent, 
whose family later appears in this narrative), he 
had signed the '' devise " in accordance with which 
Jane was proclaimed Queen. And the old lady 
would with bated breath tell him of the cruel fate of 
that nine-days' queen. Of how Francis of Hunting- 
don was sent to the Tower with Queen Jane, she also 
would tell. But perhaps not much of how he shortly 
made his peace wnth Queen Mary, hunted down lilie 
dead Jane's father, and brought him to the scaffold. 
And either their grandmother or their father, the 
Judge, could tell them of the night in 1569 on which 
their cousin, Henry, third Earl of Huntingdon, had 
entertained in the castle " rising on the very borders " 
of the forest to the east, Mary, Queen of Scots, when 
she was on her way to her captivity in the house of 
another connection of theirs, Henry Cavendish, at Tut- 
bury in the county of Stafford, just east of them. 

In the history of culture not only John and Francis, 
but the Beaumonts in general are illustrious. In 
various branches and for generations the poetic, 
scholarly, and artistic vein has persisted. John 
Beaumont's son and heir, the second Sir John, edited 
his father's poems, and lived to write memorial verses 
on Ben Jonson, and on Edward King, Milton's 
" Lycidas " ; and another son, Francis, wrote verses. 
A relative and namesake of the dramatist's father, — 
afterwards Master of Charterhouse, — wrote an Epis- 
tle prefixed to Speght's Chaucer^ 1598; and still an- 
other more distant relative, Dr. Joseph, Master of Pe- 
terhouse, and author of the epic allegory, Psyche, was 
one of the poetic imitators through whom Spenser's 



OXFORD 25 

influence was conveyed to Milton. The Sir George 
Beaumont of Wordsworth's day to whom reference 
has already been made was celebrated by that poet 
both as artist and patron of art. And, according to 
Darley/ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was of the 
race and maiden name of our dramatist's mother, 
Anne Pierrepoint. From which coincidence one may, 
if he will, argue poetic blood on that side of the fam- 
ily, too; or from Grosart's derivation of Jonathan Ed- 
wards from that family, polemic blood, as well. 

The three sons of Justice Beaumont of Grace-Dieu 
were entered on February 4, 1597, at Broadgates 
Hall, now Pembroke, which at that time was one of 
the most flourishing and fashionable institutions in 
Oxford. These young gentlemen-commoners were 
evidently destined for the pursuit of the civil and com- 
mon law, since, as Dyce informs us, their Hall was 
then the principal nursery for students of that disci- 
pline. But one cannot readily visualize young Frank, 
not yet thirteen, or his brother John, a year or so older, 
devoting laborious hours to the Corpus Juris in the 
library over the south aisle of St. Aldate's Church, or 
to their Euclid, Strabo, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian. 
We see them, more probably, slipping across St. Al- 
date's street to Wolsey's gateway of Christ Church, 
and through the, then unfinished, great quadrangle, 
past Wolsey's tower in the southeast corner, and, by 
what then served for the Broad Walk, to what now 
are called the Magdalen College School cricket 
grounds, and so to some well-moored boat on the 
flooded meadows by the Cherwell. And some days, 

1 Works of B. and F„ XVI. 



26 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

they would have under arm or in pocket a tattered 
volume of Ovid, preferably in translation, — Turber- 
ville's Heroical Epistles, or Golding's rendering of the 
Metamorphoses, — or Painter's Palace of Pleasure, or 
Fenton's Tragical Discourses out of Bandello, dedi- 
cated to the sister of Sir Philip Sidney — Sir Philip, 
v^hose daughter young Francis should, one day, re- 
vere and celebrate in noble lines. Or they would 
have Harington's Orlando Furioso to wonder upon; 
or some cheap copy of Amadis or Palmerin to waken 
laughter. And, other days, fresh quartos of Tambur- 
laine and Edward II and Dido, or Kyd's Spanish 
Tragedy and Lyly's Gallathea, or Greene's Frier Ba- 
con and James IV, or Shakespeare's Richard II, and 
Richard III, and Romeo and Juliet, and Love's La- 
hour's Lost. These, with alternate shuddering and 
admiring, mirth or tears, to declaim and in imagina- 
tion re-enact. And certainly there would be mellow 
afternoons when the Songs and Sonnettes known as 
TotteVs Miscellany and The Paradyse of Daynty 
Devises, with their poems of love and chivalry by 
Thomas, Lord Vaux, — of which they had often heard 
from their cousins of Harrowden, — and Chapman's 
completion of Hero and Leander or Shakespeare's 
Venus aJid Adonis, and Drayton's fantastic but 
graceful Endimion and Phoebe would hold them 
till the shadows were well aslant, and the candles 
began to wink them back to the Cardinal's quadrangle 
and the old refectory, beyond, of Broadgates Hall. 
For the Char and the boats were there then, and all 
these El Dorados of the mind were to be had in 
quarto or other form, and some of them were appear- 




V^ew taken by Buck in 1730 

RUINS OF GRACE-DIEU 

Note: After Buck's time the ruins were " carried away to mend the roads" 

See John Throsby, Select Views of Leicestershire, Vol. II, 461 




A PRIORY, ULVESTON, EXTANT IN 1730 



Taken by Buck 



OXFORD 27 

ing first in print in the year when Frank and his broth- 
ers entered Oxford. 

We may be sure, that many a time these brothers 
and sworn friends in Hterature, and Henry, too, loyal 
young Elizabethans, — and with them, perhaps, their 
cousin, Robert Pierrepoint, who was then at Oriel, — 
strolled northwest from the Cherwell toward Yarnton, 
and then Woodstock with its wooded slopes, to see the 
island where Queen Elizabeth, when but princess, had 
been imprisoned for a twelvemonth, and, hearing a 
milk-maid singing, had sighed, '' She would she were 
a milkmaid as she was " ; and that they took note of 
fair Rosamund's well and bower, too. They may have 
tramped or ridden onward north to Banbury, and got 
there at the same cakeshop in Parsons Street the same 
cakes we get now. Or, some happy Michaelmas, 
they would have walked toward the fertile Vale of 
Evesham, north, first, toward Warwickshire where at 
Compton Scorpion Sir Thomas Overbury, the ill- 
fated friend of their future master, Ben Jonson, 
w^as born, and on by the village of Quinton but 
six miles from Shakespeare's Stratford, toward 
Mickleton and the Malvern Hills; and then, turn- 
ing toward the Cotswolds, to Winchcombe with its 
ancient abbey and its orchards, to see just south 
of it Sudely Castle where Henry VHI's last wife, 
the divorced Catherine Parr, had lived and died, — 
where Giles, third Baron Chandos, had entertained 
Queen Bess, and where in their time abode the 
Lord William. With this family of Brydges, Bar- 
ons Chandos, the lads were acquainted, if not in 1597 
at any rate after 1602, when the fifth Baron, Grey, 



28 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

succeeded to the title. For, writing Teares on the 
death of that hospitable " King of the Cotswolds," 
which occurred in 1621, John Beaumont describes him 
with the admiration begotten of long intimacy, — 
'' the smoothnesse of his mind," '* his wisdome and 
his happy parts," and *' his sweet behaviour and dis- 
course." 

Or, — and how could any young Oxonian fail of it? 
— they started from Broadgates, down the High, 
crossed Magdalen Bridge, where the boats were lazily 
oaring below them, and set out for the climb to Rose 
Hill ; then down by sleepy ways to Littlemore, and to 
Sand ford; then up the two long sharp ascents to 
Nuneham, — where now, in the fine old manor house, 
hangs Frank's own portrait in oils, — one of the 
two contemporary likenesses of him that exist to-day. 



CHAPTER III 

AT THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY; 
THE POEMS ASSIGNED TO THESE EARLIER YEARS. 

THE career of the Beaumonts at the University 
was shortened by the death of their father, some 
fourteen months after their admission. Henry had 
been entered of the Inner Temple, November 27, 1597, 
at his father's request. Some say with John, but I do 
not find the latter in the Records. Francis may have 
remained at Oxford until 1600. On November 3 of 
that year, he, also, was admitted a member of the 
Inner Temple, his two brothers acting as sponsors for 
him. We notice from the admission-book that he was 
matriculated spccialiter, gratis, comitive, — because his 
father had been a Bencher, — was excused from most 
of the ordinary duties and charges, and was permitted 
to take his meals and to lodge outside the Inn of Court 
itself. I gather that, like other young students at the 
time, he lodged and pursued his studies in one of 
the lesser Inns, called Inns of Chancery, attached to the 
Inner Temple and under its supervision: Clifford's 
Inn across Fleet Street; or, across the Strand, Lyon's 
Inn, — or, let us hope, by preference, Clement's Inn ; 
where had lain Jack Falstaff" in the days when he was 
"page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk," and 

29 



30 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

was seen by lusty Shallow to " break Skogan's head 
at the court-gate when 'a was a crack not thus high; " 
where had boozed Shallow himself and his four 
friends — *' not four such swinge-bucklers in all the 
Inns of Court again " ; and where, no doubt, they were 
talking in Beaumont's day " of mad Shallow yet." 

In 1600, the Inns of Chancery lodged about a 
hundred students each, and served as preparatory 
schools for the Inns of Court. At one of these lesser 
Inns ^ Beaumont would acq^uire some elementary 
knowledge of civil procedure by copying writs of the 
Clerks of Chancery, would listen to a reader sent over 
by the Inner Temple to lecture, and would be 
** bolted," or sifted, in the elements of law by the 
" inner " or junior barristers ; and he would attend 
" moots " over which senior or " utter " barristers 
presided. At the end of about two years or earlier, 
if he proved a promising scholar, he would be trans- 
ferred to the Inn of Court, itself. We may assume 
that about 1602, Beaumont would be sitting in Clerks' 
Commons in the Hall of the Inner Temple. Bread 
and beer for breakfast, — provided on only four days 
of the week. At 12 o'clock he would be summoned to 
dinner by the blowing of a horn, — " thou home of 
hunger that cal'st the inns a court to their manger." 
For his mess of meat, — in Lent, fish, — on other oc- 
casions, loins of mutton, or beef, — he would make 
himself a trencher of bread. At 6 or 7 o'clock would 

'^ Inns of Court and Chancery (Lond., 1912), p. 45; W. R. 
Douthwaite, Gray's Inn, its History and Associations (Lond., 
1886), pp. 36, 78, 253. For the Beaumonts, and what follows, see, 
also, Inderwick, Inner Temple Records (Lond. 1896), I, 421; II, 
435; Introductions, and subjects as indexed. 



AT THE INNS OF COURT 31 

come supper, — bread and beer again. After dinner, 
and again after supper, he would enjoy bolts and ex- 
ercises conducted by the utter barristers, day in and 
day out through nearly the whole year. As he ad- 
vanced in proficiency he would appear as a *' moot- 
man " in the arguments presented before the Benchers, 
or governing fellows, seated as judges. And perhaps 
he resigned himself, meanwhile, to the proper wear 
within the Inn, which was cap and gown, *' but the 
fashion was to wear hats, cloaks or coats, swords, 
rapiers, boots and spurs, large ruffs and long hair. 
Even Benchers were found to sit in Term Time with 
hats on." ^ 

Whether Beaumont gave promise or not we are 
ignorant. The routine of the Inn was impeccable; 
but students and benchers were not. There were not 
infrequently other exercises than " moots " after sup- 
per : cards and stage-plays, revels and sometimes riots. 
This much we know, that before young Frank could 
have fulfilled his seven or more years as student and 
'' moot-man," he was already in the rank of poets 
and dramatists. But, that by no means precludes his 
continuance for several years, perhaps till 1608, in 
the juridical university, or his intimate association 
with and residence in the stately old quadrangles of 
what would be his college, — the Inner Temple. And 
for a young man of his temperament the atmosphere 
was as poetic as juridical. The young man's fancy 
was fired by the poetry and the drama that for cen- 
turies had enlivened the graver pursuits of the Gothic 
halls that rose between Fleet Street and the Thames, 

1 Inns of Court, etc., p. 163. 



32 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Whitefriars and Paget Place, — '* the noblest nurseries 
of humanity and liberty in the kingdom/' as Ben 
Jonson calls them in his dedication ^ to the Inns of 
Court of Every Man out of his Humour , first published 
in the year when Beaumont entered. 

According to Aubrey, while the garden-wall of 
Lincoln's Inn, close by, was building, a Bencher 
of that society " walking thro' and hearing " a 
young bricklayer " repeat some Greek verses out of 
Homer, discoursed with him, and finding him to 
have a witt extraordinary gave him some exhibition 
to maintaine him at Trinity College, Cambridge." 
That young bricklayer was, later, Beaumont's friend 
and master, Ben Jonson. Lincoln's Inn had long been 
a nursing mother to dramatic effort. At the begin- 
ning of Queen Elizabeth's reign it was one of its 
members, Richard Edwardes, who, as Master of the 
Chapel Children, produced the " tragicall comedie " 
Damon and Pythias, and the tragedy of Palamon and 
Arcite, to the great edification of the Queen, and the 
permanent improvement of the Senecan style of 
drama by the fusion of the ideal and the common- 
place, of the romantic, the serious, and the humorous 
in an appeal to popular interest. " He was highly 
valued," this Edwardes, " by those that knew him," says 
Anthony Wood, " especially his associates in Lincoln's 
Inn." And it was in the Middle Temple, just fourteen 
months after Beaumont joined the Inns of Court, that 
Manningham, one of the barristers, witnessed the per- 
formance for the Reader's Feast on Candlemas Day of 
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. If Beaumont of the In- 
^The Dedication first appears in the folio of 1616. 



AT THE INNS OF COURT 33 

ner Temple, within a stone's throw, did not hear more 
than the applause, he was not our Frank Beaumont. 
We may be sure that he had sauntered through the 
Temple Gardens many an afternoon, and knew the 
spot immortalized by Marlowe and that same Shakes- 
peare, as the scene of the quarrel between Plantagenet 
and Somerset when the white and red roses were 
plucked, and that he would hear Shakespeare when he 
could. 

But much as the Middle Temple and Lincoln's 
favoured the drama and costly entertainments on the 
major feast-days, they were outdone in Christmas 
revels and masques and plays by the closely affiliated 
societies of Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple. Be- 
tween these Houses, says Mr. Douthwaite, the his- 
torian of the former, '' there appears anciently to have 
existed a kindly union, which is shown by the fact that 
on the great gate of the gardens of the Inner Temple 
may be seen to this day [1886] the ' griffin ' of Gray's 
Inn, whilst over the great gateway in Gray's Inn 
Square is carved in bold relief the ' winged horse ' 
of the Inner Temple." The two societies had long 
a custom of combining for the production of the- 
atrical shows; and as we shall see, they com- 
bined some thirteen years after Beaumont entered the 
Inner Temple in the production at Court of one of 
the most glorious and expensive masques ever pre- 
sented in London, Beaumont's own masque for the 
wedding of the Elector Palatine and the Princess 
Elizabeth. They were influential as patrons of the 
early drama, and as producers of amateur dramatists. 
For centuries Gray's Inn had permitted ** revels " 



34 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

after six o'clock supper of bread and beer; and when 
Beaumont was of the Inner Temple close by, there 
was a Grand Week at Gray's in every term. " They 
had revels and masques some of which," as a member 
of that society has recently said, " have never been 
forgotten, and I think cannot be forgotten while Eng- 
lish history lasts." ^ From a very early date, perhaps 
not long after the society was established in Edward 
the Third's reign in the old manor of Portpool, '' they 
were addicted at the Christmas season to a great out- 
burst of revelry of every kind. The revelings be- 
gan at All Hallows; at Christmas a Prince of Port- 
poole was appointed; who was also Lord of Misrule, 
and he kept things gaily alive through Christmas and 
until toward the end of January." These and other 
disguises, masques, and mummeries, are lineal de- 
scendants of the mummings of the Ancient Order of 
the Coif, such as regaled King Richard II at Christ- 
mas 1389; and, amalgamated with St. George plays 
and other folk-shows and even with sword-dances, they 
influenced the course of rural drama throughout the 
realm. It may be a bow drawn at a venture but I can- 
not withhold the suspicion that the Lord of Pool of the 
Revesby Sword-Play and of other popular composi- 
tions derives from the historic Prince of Misrule of 
the Gray's Inn Christmas revels. It was George Gas- 
coigne of Gray's Inn who by a translation from 
Ariosto introduced the Renaissance treatment of the 
Greek New Comedy and the Latin Comedy into Eng- 
land with his Supposes in 1566, and in the same year, 

^H. E. Duke, K.C., M.P., Gray's Inn in Six Lectures on the 
Inns of Court and of Chancery, 1912. 



AT THE INNS OF COURT 35 

with Francis Kinwelmersh, produced at Gray's Inn 
an English rendering of Ludovico Dolce's Giocasta, 
a tragedy descended from Euripides' Phoenissae by 
way of a Latin version. " Altogether," remarks 
Professor Cunliffe/ " the play must have provided a 
gorgeous and exciting spectacle, and have produced 
an impression not unworthy of Gray's Inn, * an 
House ', the Queen said on another occasion, * she was 
much beholden unto, for that it did always study for 
some sports to present unto her.' " To this house 
and to Gascoigne, Shakespeare, too, was beholden, 
for from the Supposes proceeds more or less directly 
the minor plot of The Taming of the Shrew. In 
1588, Gray's Inn figures prominently again in the 
career of th^ pre-Shakespearian drama, with the pro- 
duction by one of its gentlemen, Thomas Hughes, of 
a tragedy of English legend and Senecan type. The 
Misfortunes of Arthur, played by the society before 
the Queen at Greenwich. And, in 1594, Gray's Inn 
connects itself with the Shakespearian drama directly 
by witnessing in the great hall in the Christmas sea- 
son a play called A Comedy of Errors, " like to Plautus 
his Menaechmus." 

It is diverting to note that on the eve of just that 
season of 1594, a very pious woman, the second wife 
of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and the mother of Anthony 
and Francis, is writing to the elder brother " I trust 
that they will not mum nor sinfully make revel at 
Gray's Inn." Anthony was not a very strict Puritan, 
Francis still less so; and Francis, who had been of 
Gray's Inn since 1575, was, till his fall from power, 

1 Early English Classical Tragedies, Introduction, p. Ixxxvi. 



36 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

the keenest devotee and most ardent and reckless pro- 
moter of masquing that Gray's Inn or, for that mat- 
ter, England, had ever known. According to Sped- 
ding,^ the speeches of the six councillors for the 
famous court of the Prince of Purpoole in 1594 were 
written by him and him alone. He furnished the 
money and much of the device for gorgeous masques 
before Queen Elizabeth; and under her successor he 
was prime mover in many a masque, like that of the 
Flowers, presented by the gentlemen of Gray's Inn, in 
1 6 14, which, alone, cost him about £10,000 as reck- 
oned in the money of to-day. The masques by the 
four Inns, in honour of the Elector Palatine's mar- 
riage, the year before, are said to have cost £20,000, 
< — five hundred thousand dollars in the money of to- 
day ! And it would appear that much of this expense 
was assumed by Sir Francis Bacon, who in the years 
of his greatness as Solicitor-General and Attorney- 
General retained intimate relations with the life of 
Gray's Inn, and whom our Beaumont during the years 
of studentship before 1603, when the gallant Sir Wal- 
ter Raleigh was consigned to the Tower, must many 
times have seen strolling with Sir Walter in the walks 
that Bacon himself had laid out for his fellow-bench- 
ers of the Inn. 

If Beaumont's family had deliberately set about 
preparing him for his career of poet and dramatist, 
especially of dramatist who, with John Fletcher, should 
vividly reproduce the life, manners and conversation 
of young men of fashion about town, they could not 
have placed him in a community more favourable to 

1 Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, I, 342. 



AT THE INNS OF COURT 37 

these ends than that of the Inns of Court. As the 
name itself impHes the members were gentlemen of 
the Court of the King. They must be " sons to per- 
sons of quality " ; they must be trained to the possi- 
bility of appearance before the King at any time; they 
must be ready not merely as a privilege, but as a func- 
tion, to entertain royalty upon summons. As Gray's 
Inn had its flavour of romance, its literary and dra- 
matic history, its Sidney, its Bacon, its Gascoigne; 
so also the " anciently allied House "of the Inner 
Temple.. There lingered the tradition, to say the 
least, of Chaucer's stirring poetry; there the spirit of 
Sir Francis Drake, — stirring romances of the Span- 
ish main; there the memory of the Christmas revels 
of 1562 at which was first acted the Gorboduc of 
Thomas Sackville (afterwards Earl of Dorset, and 
connected by marriage with the Fletchers), and 
Thomas Norton, — whose " stately speeches and well 
sounding phrases, clyming to the height of Seneca his 
stile," whose national quality, romantic illumination 
of classical form, impressive, and novel dramatic 
blank verse were to influence imperishably the course 
of Elizabethan tragedy. There, too, had been pro- 
duced, by five poets of the House, in 1568, "the first 
English love-tragedy that has survived," ^ Gismond of 
Salerne, a distant but unmistakable forerunner in tem- 
pestuous passion and pathos of plays in which young 
Beaumont was to compose the major part. The M aides 
Tragedy and A King and No King. 

Here, in the intervals between moots and bolts in 
the day time or during the long evenings about the 

I'Cunliffe, E. E. Class. Tragedies, p. Ixxxvi. 



38 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

central fire in Hall or in Chambers, a young man of 
poetic proclivities would find ample opportunity to in- 
dulge his genius. And, even after he ceased to be an 
inmate, the Inner Temple would still be for him a 
club, in which by the payment of a small annual fee 
he might retain membership for life. And member- 
ship in one ' college ' of this pseudo-university im- 
plied an honorary * freedom ' of the others. 
Beaumont would know not only William Browne, the 
poet of the Inner Temple from 1611 on, and all 
Browne's poetic fellows in that House, but Browne's 
less poetic friend, Christopher Brooke, counsel for 
Shakespeare's company of King's Players, who earlier 
in the century had entered Lincoln's Inn; and, also, 
Brooke's chamber- fellow, John Donne, whose secret 
marriage with the daughter of the Lieutenant of the 
Tower, in 1609, got the young scapegraces into jail. 
And at Gray's Inn Beaumont would be even more at 
home. It was the ' House ' of his kinsman, Henry 
Hastings of Ashby, — in 1604 Earl of Huntingdon, — 
two years younger than Frank, and admitted as early 
as 1597; and of Robert Pierrepoint, who had come 
down with Frank from Oxford and was entered of the 
Inns at the same time; and, two years later, of Robert's 
cousin, William Cavendish, afterwards second Earl of 
Devonshire. 

If we could be sure that a poem called The Meta- 
morphosis of Tabacco, a mock-Ovidian poem of grace- 
ful style and more than ordinary wit, published in 
1602, and ascribed by some one writing in' a contem- 
porary hand upon the title-page, to John Beaumont, 



" SALMACIS AND HERMAPHRODITUS " 39 

was John's we might regard the half dozen verses in 
praise of *'thy pleasing rime," signed F. B., and begin- 
ning, 

My new-borne Muse assaies her tender wing, 
And where she should crie, is inforst to sing, — 

as young Francis' earliest effort in rhyme. The 
dedication of the Metamorphosis to " my loving 
friend. Master Michael Drayton," favours the con- 
jectured composition by John, for he is writing other 
complimentary poems to Drayton in the years immedi- 
ately following 1602. But, though F. B.'s lines prefa- 
tory to the Metamorphosis are not unworthy of 
a fanciful youngster, they are negligible; as is 
the evidence of their authorship. Certain flimsy 
love-poems included in a volume published forty years 
later, twenty-four years after Beaumont's death, as 
of his composition, have also been attributed to his 
boyhood at the University, or at the Inner Temple. 
Most of them have been definitely traced to other au- 
thors, and of the rest of this class still unassigned 
there is no reason to believe that he was the author. 
In the same volume, however, there appears as by 
Beaumont a metrical tale based upon Ovid, called 
Salmacis and Hermaphroditiis, of which we cannot 
be certain that he was not the author. The poem was 
first published, without name of writer, in 1602,^ and 
was not assigned to Francis Beaumont until 1639, 
when Lawrence Blaiklock included it among the 
Poems: By Francis Beaumont, Gent., entered on the 
Stationers' Registers, September 2, and published, 

1 Reprinted by Dramaticus, Sh. Soc. Pap. Ill, 94 (1847). 



40 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

1640. Blaiklock evidently printed from John 
Hodgets's edition of 1602, carelessly omitting here 
and there a line, and introducing absurd typographical 
mistakes. Either because he had private information 
that Beaumont was the author, or because he wished 
to profit by Beaumont's reputation, he goes so far as 
to sign the initials, F. B., to the verse dedication. To 
Calliope, and to alter the signature, A. F., appended to 
an introductory sonnet, To the Author, so as to read 
I. F. (suggesting John Fletcher.) These licenses, in 
addition to the reckless inclusion in the 1640 volume 
of several poems by authors other than Beaumont, 
vitiate Blaiklock's evidence. On the other hand, the 
original publisher, Hodgets, was the publisher also, in 
1607, of The Woman-Hater, a play now reasonably 
accepted as by Beaumont, originally alone; and, in 
Hodgets's edition of the Salmacis and Hermaphrodi- 
tus, one of the introductory sonnets is signed J. B., 
and another W. B. The ' J. B.' sonnet is not un- 
worthy of Beaumont's brother John. And if the 
W. B. of the other verses. In Laudem Authoris,^ 
is William Basse, — who in a sonnet, written after 
Beaumont's death, speaks of him as *' rare Beau- 
mont," — there is further justification for entertaining 
the possibility of Beaumont's authorship of the Sal- 
macis. For Basse was one of the group of pastoral- 
ists to which Francis' friend Drayton, and Drayton's 
friend, William Browne, belonged, — a group with 
which Francis must have been acquainted. But of 
that we shall have more to say when we come to 
consider Beaumont's later connection with Drayton, 
and with the dramatic activities of the Inner Temple 



" SALMACIS AND HERMAPHRODITUS " 41 

at a time when Browne and other pastoraHsts were 
members of it. For the present it is sufficient to 
say that Basse was himself issuing a pastoral romance 
in the year of Salmacis, 1602 ; and that he was by way 
of subscribing himself simply W. B. 

The external evidence for Beaumont's authorship 
of this metrical tale is, at the best, but slight. As 
regards the internal, however, I cannot agree with 
Fleay and the author of the article entitled Salmacis 
and Hermaphroditus not by Beaumont.'^ Both dic- 
tion and verse display characteristics not foreign to 
Beaumont's heroic couplets in epistle and elegy, nor 
to the blank verse of his dramas, — though they do 
not markedly distinguish them. The romantic-clas- 
sical and idyllic grace may be the germ of that which 
flowers in the tragicomedies; and the joyous irony 
is not unlike that of The Wo man- Hater and The 
Knight of the Burning Pestle. The poem is a volup- 
tuous and rambling expansion of the classical theme 
" which sweet-lipt Ovid long agoe did tell." The 
writer, like many a lad of 1602, has steeped himself 
in the amatory fable and fancy of Marlowe, Chapman, 
and Shakespeare; and the passionate imaginings are 
such as characterize poetic lads of seventeen in any 
period. It is not impossible that here we have Francis 
Beaumont's earliest attempt at a poem of some pro- 
portions, and that he was stirred to it by exercises 
like The Endimion and Phoebe of Drayton, probably 
by that time the friend of the Grace-Dieu family. 
Francis, indeed, need not have been ashamed of such 
a performance, for in spite of the erotic fervour and 

^ Dramaticus, (as above). 



42 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

the occasional far-fetched conceits, the poet has vis- 
ualized clearly the scenes of his mythological idyl, 
and enhvened the narrative with ingenuous humour; 
he has caught the figured style and something of the 
winged movement of his masters; and every here and 
there he has produced lines of more than imitative 
beauty : 

Locke how, when Autumne comes, a little space 
Paleth the red blush of the Summer's face, 
Searing the leaves, the Summer's covering, 
Three months in weaving by the curious Spring, — 
Making the grasse, his greene locks, go to wracke, 
Tearing each ornament from off his backe; 
So did she spoyle the garments she did weare, 
Tearing whole ounces of her golden hayre. 

The earliest definite indication that I have found 
of Beaumont's literary activity, and of his recognition 
by poets, connects him with his brother John, and is 
highly suggestive in still other respects. John had al- 
ready written, in 1603 or 1604, verses prefatory to 
Drayton's poetic treatment of Moyses in a Map of his 
Miracles J published in June of the latter year ; and also, 
in 1605, to Drayton's revision of the Barrons Wars. 
On April 19, 1606, Drayton issued a volume entitled 
Poems Lyrick and Pastoral, which included with other 
verses a revision, under the name of Eglogs, of his 
Idea, the Shepheard's Garland, first published in 1593. 
In the eighth eclogue of this new edition, Drayton, 
writing of the ladies of his time to whom '^ much 
the Muses owe,'' adds to his praise of Sidney's (El- 
phin's) sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, an en- 



DRAYTON AND THE HOPEFUL BOYS 43 

comium upon the two daughters of his early patron, 
Sir Henry Goodere, Frances and Anne (Lady Rams- 
ford) ; then he celebrates a " dear Sylvia, one the best 
alive," and 

Then that dear nymph that in the Muses joys, 

That in wild Charnwood with her flocks doth go, 

Mirtilla, sister to those hopeful boys. 

My loved Thyrsis and sweet Palmeo ; 

That oft to Soar the southern shepherds bring, 
Of whose clear waters they divinely sing. 

So good she is, so good likewise they be. 
As none to her might brother be but they, 
Nor none a sister unto them, but she, — 
To them for wit few like, I dare will say : 
In them as Nature truly meant to show 
How near the first, she in the last could go. 

The " golden-mouthed Drayton musical " had spent 
his youth not many miles from " wild Charnwood," 
at Polesworth Hall, the home of the Gooderes, in 
Warwickshire. The dear nymph of Charnwood is 
Elizabeth Beaumont, in 1606 a lass of eighteen, — and 
the " hopeful boys " who bring the southern shep- 
herds (Jonson, perhaps, and young John Fletcher, as 
well as Drayton) to their Grace-Dieu priory by the 
river Soar, are John, then about twenty-three, and 
the future dramatist, about twenty-two.^ Under the 
pastoral pseudonym of Mirtilla, Elizabeth is again 
celebrated by Drayton twenty- four years later, in his 

lOn these identifications, see Fleay, Chron. Eng. Dr., I, 143- 
145; Elton, Michael Drayton, pp. 13, 58; Child, Michael Drayton 
(in Camb. Hist. Lit., IV, 197, et seq.). 



44 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Muses Elizivim. Since these Pastorals are in con- 
fessed sequence with those of '' the prime pastoralist 
of England," and the pastoral Thyrsis and young 
Palmeo have already sung divinely of the clear waters 
of their native stream, it would appear that they too 
are disciples at that time of Master Edmund Spenser 
in his Shepheards Calender. And since these 
brothers, so like in wit and feature, and in charming 
devotion to their sister, are all the brothers that she 
has, it is evident that this portion of the Eglog was 
written after July lo, 1605; for up to that date, the 
eldest of the family, Henry, was still living, and at 
the manor house of Grace-Dieu. This friendship 
between Drayton and the " hopeful boys " continued 
through life; for, as we shall later note and more at 
length, in 1627, the year of John's death, and many 
years after that of Francis, the older poet still cele- 
brates the twain as " My dear companions whom I 
freely chose My bosome-friends." 

When James I made his famous progress from 
Edinburgh to London, April 5 to May 3, 1603, " ev- 
ery nobleman and gentleman kept open house as he 
passed. He spent his time in festivities and amuse- 
ments of various kinds. The gentry of the counties 
through which his journey lay thronged in to see him. 
Most of them returned home decorated with the 
honours of knighthood, a title which he dispensed with 
a profusion which astonished those who remembered 
the sober days of Elizabeth." ^ One of those thus 
decorated was the poet's brother Henry, who was 
dubbed knight bachelor at Worksop in Derbyshire, on 

1 Gardiner, Hist. Engl. 1603-1607, p. 87. 



DRAYTON AND THE HOPEFUL BOYS 45 

the same day as his uncle, " Henry Perpoint of 
county Notts," and William Skipwith of Cotes in the 
Beaumont county — who appears later as a friend 
of Fletcher. Two days afterwards, Thomas Beau- 
mont of Coleorton received the honour of knighthood 
at the Earl of Rutland's castle of Belvoir.^ 

Sir Henry of Grace-Dieu did not long enjoy his 
title. He died about the tenth of July 1605, and 
was buried on the thirteenth. By his will, witnessed 
by his brother Francis, and probated February 1606, 
Sir Henry left half of his private estate to his sister, 
Elizabeth *' for her advancement in marriage," and 
the other half to be divided equally between John and 
Francis. He was succeeded as head of the family 
by John,2 who later married a daughter of John For- 
tescue — also of a poetic race — and left by her a 
large family. The sister, Elizabeth (Mirtilla) prob- 
ably continued to live at Grace-Dieu until her mar- 
riage to Thomas Seyliard of Kent. And that Francis 
occasionally came home on visits from London we have 
other proof than that afforded by Drayton. The 
provision of a competence made by Sir Henry's will 
leads us to conjecture that the subsequent dramatic 
activity of the younger brother was undertaken for 
sheer love of the art; and that, while his finances may 
have been occasionally at low ebb, the association in 
Bohemian menage with John Fletcher, which followed 
the years of residence at the Inner Temple, was a 
matter of choice, not of poverty. 

1 Shaw's Knights of Engl., Vol. II, under dates. 

2 Grosart {D. N. B. art. John Beaumont) says that John had 
been admitted to the Inner Temple with Henry. John does not 
appear in Inderwick. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE VAUX COUSINS AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOT 

CERTAIN political events of the years 1603 to 
1606 must have occasioned the young Beaumonts 
intimate and poignant concern. Their own family was, 
of course, Protestant, but it was closely connected by 
blood and matrimonial alliance with some of the most 
devoted and conspicuous Catholic families of England. 
Some of their Hastings kinsmen, sons of Francis, Earl 
of Huntingdon, were Catholics ; and their first cousins, 
the Vauxes, whose home at Great Harrowden near by 
had been for over twenty years the harbourage of per- 
secuted priests, were active Jesuits. After the death 
of his first wife, — Beaumont's aunt Elizabeth, who left 
four children, Henry, Eleanor, Elizabeth, and Anne, — 
William, Lord Vaux, had married Mary, the sister of 
the noble-hearted and self-sacrificing Catholic, Sir 
Thomas Tresham of Rushton in Northamptonshire; 
and this lady had brought up her own children, George 
and Ambrose, as well as the children of the first mar- 
riage, in strict adherence to the Roman faith and prac- 
tice. Henry, the heir to the title, had been one of that 
zealous band of young Catholic gentlemen who re- 
ceived Fathers Campion and Persons on their arrival in 
England in 1580.^ Before 1594, Henry, " that blessed 

ijohn Morris, Life of Father John Gerard, p. 311, et. s'eq. 

46 



HIS CATHOLIC COUSINS 47 

gentleman and saint," as Father Persons calls him, had 
died, having resigned his inheritance of the Barony to 
his brother George some years earlier in order to spend 
his remaining days in celibacy, study, and prayer. In 
1590, George, the elder son by the second marriage, 
had taken to wife, Elizabeth Roper, also an ardent 
Catholic, the daughter of the future Lord Teynham. 
She was left a widow in 1594 with an infant son, Ed- 
ward, whom she educated to maintain the Catholicity 
of the family. In 1595, the old Baron, Beaumont's 
uncle, died — " the infortunatest peer of Parliament 
for poverty that ever was " by reason of the fines and 
forfeitures entailed upon him for his religious zeal. 
Meanwhile, in 159I; we find the daughters of the first 
marriage, Eleanor, whose husband was an Edward 
Brookesby, of Arundel House, Leicestershire, and 
Anne Vaux, concealing in a house in Warwickshire, 
the well-known Father Gerard and his Superior, 
Father Garnet, from priest-hunters, or pursuivants. 
These two cousins of Beaumont are described in 
Father Gerard's Narrative ^ as illustrious for goodness 
and holiness, " whom in my own mind I often compare 
to the two women who received our Lord." The 
younger, Anne, " was remarkable at all times for her 
virginal modesty and shamefacedness, but in the cause 
of God and the defence of His servants, the virgo 
became virago. She is almost always ill, but we have 
seen her, when so weakened as to be scarce able to utter 
three words without pain, on the arrival of the pursui- 
vants become so strong as to spend three or four hours 
in contest with them. When she has no priest in the 
1 Morris, op. cit,, p. 113. See below, Appendix, Table D. 



48 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

house she feels afraid; but the simple presence of a 
priest so animates her that then she makes sure that no 
devil has any power over her house." In the years 
that follow to 1605, the Vauxes are identified as recu- 
sants and as sympathizers with the untoward fortunes 
of Fathers Southwell, Walpole, Garnet, and others. 
In 1 60 1, their kinsman and Frank Beaumont's, Henry- 
Hastings, nephew to George, fourth Earl of Hunting- 
don, has joined the ranks and in 1602, we find him in a 
list of Jesuits " to be sought after " by the Earl of 
Salisbury, — " John Gerard with Mrs. Vaux and young 
Mr. Hastings." Father Gerard's headquarters in fact 
are from 1598 to 1605 with Mrs. Vaux and her son 
Edward, the young Baron, at Great Harrowden, and 
there others of the fifteen Jesuit fathers in England at 
that time, and prominent Catholics, such as Sir Oliver 
Manners, brother of Roger, Earl of Rutland, Sir 
Everard Digby, and Francis Tresham, a first cousin 
of Mrs. Vaux, were wont to foregather. 

When James I came to the throne, the Catholics had 
hope of some alleviation of the penalties under which 
they laboured. Disappointed in this hope, the discon- 
tented, led by two priests, Watson and Clarke, em- 
barked upon a wild scheme to kidnap the King and set 
as the price of his liberty the extension to Catholics of 
equal rights, religious, civil, and political, with the 
Protestants. The plot was betrayed, the priests ex- 
ecuted, and the other leaders condemned to death, — 
then reprieved but attainted. Among those thus re- 
prieved were Lord Grey de Wilton and " a confederate 
named Brookesby." This Brookesby was Bartholo- 
mew, the brother of Eleanor Vaux's husband. When 



THE GUNPOWDER PLOT 49 

new and more stringent measures were immediately 
adopted for the repression of priests and recusants, the 
indignation of the CathoHcs reached a cHmax. " They 
saw, '' says Gardiner, " no more than the intolerable 
wrong under which they suffered; and it would be 
strange if there were not some amongst them who 
would be driven to meet wrong with violence, and to 
count even the perpetration of a great crime as a merit- 
orious deed." ^ 

In 1603 Father Gerard took a new house in London 
in the fields behind St. Clement's Inn, — just across the 
Strand from the Inner Temple where Francis Beau- 
mont was living at the time. " This new house," says 
Gerard, " was very suitable and convenient and had 
private entrances on both sides, and I had contrived in 
it some most excellent hiding-places ; and there I 
should have long remained, free from all peril or even 
suspicion, if some friends of mine, while I was absent 
from London, had not availed themselves of the house 
rather rashly." ^ These friends were Robert Catesby, 
a cousin of the Vauxes of Harrowden; his cousin, 
Thomas Winter; Winter's relative, John Wright, and 
Thomas Percy, a kinsman of Henry, ninth Earl of 
Northumberland, — all gentlemen of distinguished 
county families. In May 1604, these men with one 
Guy Fawkes of York and Scotton, a soldier of fortune 
and " excellent good natural parts," and, like the rest, 
fanatic with brooding over the wrongs of the Catholic 
Church, met at Father Gerard's house behind St. 
Clement's Inn, swore to keep secret the purpose of 

1 Gardiner, Hist. Engl. 1603-1642, I, 234. 

2 Morris, p. 360. See also, below, Appendix, Table D. 



50 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

their meeting, received in an adjoining room the Sacra- 
ment from Father Gerard, an unwitting accomphce, in 
confirmation of their oath ; and then, retiring, learned 
from Catesby that the project intended was to blow up 
the Parliament House with gunpowder when the King 
and the royal family next came to the House of Lords. 
Within a few days " Thomas Percy hired a howse at 
Westminster," says Fawkes in his subsequent Confes- 
sion, " neare adjoyning Park, howse, and there wee 
beganne to make a myne about the XI of December, 
1604." The rest of the story is too well-known to call 
for repetition. How the gunpowder was smuggled 
into a cellar running under the Parliament House ; 
how, when Parliament was prorogued to November 
5th, 1605, the conspirators, running short of money to 
equip an insurrection, added to their number a few 
wealthy accomplices, — most significant to our narra- 
tive, that old friend of the Vauxes, Sir Edward Digby, 
and Francis Tresham, cousin of Catesby and the W^in- 
ters, and as I have said of the Vauxes themselves.^ 
How Tresham, recoiling from the destruction of inno- 
cent Catholic Lords with the detested Protestants, met 
Catesby, Winter, and Faw^kes at White Webbs, " a 
house known as Dr. Hewick's house by Enfield Chace," 
and laboured with them for permission to warn their 
friends, especially his brothers-in-law, Lord Stourton 
and Monteagle; and how, when permission was re- 

^ Fletcher's connections, also, the Bakers, Lennards, and 
Sackvilles were interested in the fortunes of Francis Tresham ; 
for he had married Anne Tufton of Hothfield, Kent, grand- 
daughter of Mary Baker who was sister of Sir Richard of 
Sissinghurst and of Cicely, first Countess of Dorset. — Collins, 
III, 489; Hasted, VII, 518. See below, Appendix, Tables D. E. 



THE GUNPOWDER PLOT 51 

fused, he wrote an anonymous letter to Monteagle, beg- 
ging him " as you tender your hfe, to devise some 
excuse to shift of your attendance at this Parhament ; 
for God and man hath concurred to punish the wicked- 
ness of this time." How Monteagle informed the 
Council and the King. How Guy Fawkes was discov- 
ered among his barrels of gunpowder, and on the 
fourth of November arrested as " John Johnson," the 
servant of Thomas Percy, one of the King's Gentle- 
men Pensioners. How " on the morning of the fifth, 
the news of the great deliverance ran like wildfire along 
the streets of London," and Catesby and Wright, Percy 
and the brothers Winter, were in full flight for Lady 
Catesby's house in Ashby St. Legers, Northampton- 
shire, not far from Harrowden. 

With the rest of the world Francis Beaumont would 
gasp with amazement. But what must have been his 
concern when on the first examination of '' John John- 
son," November 5th, the identity of that conspirator 
was established not by any confession of his, but from 
the contents of a letter found upon him, written by 
Beaumont's first cousin, Anne Vaux ! ^ 

As intelligence oozed from the Lords of Council, 
Beaumont would next learn that Anne's sister-in-law, 
Mrs. [Elizabeth] Vaux of Harrowden had expected 
something was about to take place, and that Father 
Gerard and " Walley " [Garnet, the Father Superior 
of the English Jesuits] " made her house their chief 
resort " ; and then that Fawkes had confessed that 

1 The facts as here presented are drawn from the Calendar 
of State Papers (Domestic), the Gunpowder Plot Book, and 
Father Gerard's Narrative (in Morris), in the order of dates as 
indicated. 



52 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Catesby, the two Winters, and Francis Tresham — all 
of the Vaux family connection — and Sir Everard 
Digby of their close acquaintance, were implicated in 
the Plot; and that the conspiracy was not merely to 
blow up the older members of the royal family but to 
secure the Princess Elizabeth, place her upon the 
throne, and marry her to an English Catholic,^ — there- 
fore, an enterprise likely to implicate his Catholic 
cousins, indeed. His friend, Ben Jonson, is mean- 
while blustering of private informations, and Francis 
would be likely to hear that Ben has written (Novem- 
ber 8) to Lord Salisbury offering his services to un- 
ravel the web " if no better person can be found," and 
averring that the Catholics " are all so enweaved in it 
as it will make 500 gent, lesse of the religion within 
this weeke." Then he is apprised that John Wright, 
Catesby, Percy, etc., have been seen at " Lady " Vaux's 
on the eighth. The next day, that these three and 
Christopher Wright have been overtaken and slain ; and 
then that, on the ninth, Fawkes has confessed that they 
have been using a house of Father Garnet's at White 
Webbs as a rendezvous. Perhaps White Webbs means 
nothing to Francis just yet, but it soon will. Three 
days later, Tresham under examination acknowledges 
interviews with his cousins, Catesby and Thomas Win- 
ter, and with Fathers Garnet and Gerard ; but says he 
has not been at Mrs. Vaux's house at Harrowden for a 
year. Soon afterwards, December 5, the Inner Tem- 
ple itself is shaken to the foundations by the intelli- 
gence that Jesuit literature has been discovered by Sir 
Edward Coke in Tresham's chamber, — a manuscript 
iNov. 5-S. 



MRS. VAUX AND FATHER GERARD 53 

of Black well's famous treatise on Equivocation, 
destined to play a baleful role in the ensuing examina- 
tion of certain of the suspects. 

Meanwhile, Francis would observe with alarm that 
his Vaux cousins are from day to day objects of 
deeper suspicion. On November 13, Lord Vaux's 
house at Harrowden is searched ; his mother gives up 
all her keys but no papers are found. She and the 
young lord strongly deny all knowledge of the 
treason; the house, however, is still guarded. On the 
eighteenth, Elizabeth, Mrs. Vaux, is examined and says 
that she does not know " Gerard, the priest " [ !] ; but 
among the visitors at her house she mentions Catesby, 
Digby, and " Greene " [Greenway] and " Darcy " 
[Garnet], priests. She acknowledges having written 
to Lady Wenman, the wife of Sir Richard, last Easter, 
saying that " Tottenham would turn French," but fails 
to explain her meaning. From other quarters, how- 
ever, it is learned that she bade that lady "be of good 
comfort for there should soon be toleration for re- 
ligion," adding: " Fast and pray that that may come 
to pass which we purpose, which yf it doe, wee shall 
see Totnam turned French." And Sir Richard, exam- 
ined concerning the contents of Mrs. Vaux's letter to 
his wife, affirms that he " disliked their intercourse, be- 
cause Mrs. Vaux tried to pervert his wife." On 
December 4, Catesby's servant, Bates, acknowledges 
that he revealed the whole Plot to Greenway, the 
priest, in confession, " who said it was a good cause, 
bade him be secret, and absolved him." From Henry 
Huddleston's examination, December 6, it appears 
that Mrs. Vaux has not been telling the whole truth 



54 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

about Harrowden, for not only were the two other 
priests most suspected, Garnet and Greenway, there 
sometimes, but also Gerard, whom Huddleston has 
met there. On January 19, Bates definitely connects 
Gerard and Garnet with the proceedings ; and all three 
priests are proclaimed. Gerard cannot be found, but 
from his own Narrative it appears that he had been 
hiding at Harrowden before, that now he is concealed 
in London, and Elizabeth Vaux knows where. ^ When 
she is brought again before the Lords of Council and 
threatened with death if she tell not where the priest 
is, we may imagine the interest of the Beaumonts. 
Francis, though no sympathizer with the Plot, cannot 
have failed to admire the bearing of Elizabeth during 
the examination : 

" As for my hostess, Mrs. Vaux," writes Father 
Gerard, " she was brought to London after that long 
search for me, and strictly examined about me by the 
Lords of the Council; but she answered to everything 
so discreetly as to escape all blame. At last they pro- 
duced a letter of hers to a certain relative, asking for 
the release of Father Strange and another, of whom I 
spoke before. This relative of hers was the chief man 
in the county in which they had been taken, and she 
thought she could by her intercession with him prevail 
for their release. But the treacherous man, w^ho had 
often enough, as far as words went, offered to serve 
her in any way, proved the truth of our Lord's 
prophecy, * A man's enemies shall be those of his own 
household ! ' for he immediately sent up her letter to 
the Council. They showed her, therefore, her own 

1 Morris, Life of Father Gerard, p. 385. 



MRS. VAUX AND FATHER GERARD 55 

letter, and said toi her, * You see now that you are en- 
tirely at the King's mercy for Hfe or death; so if you 
consent to tell us where Father Gerard is, you shall 
have your life.' 

" ' I do not know where he is,' she answered, * and 
if I did know, I would not tell you.' 

'' Then rose one of the lords, who had been a former 
friend of hers, to accompany her to the door, out of 
courtesy, and on the way said to her persuasively, 
' Have pity on yourself and on your children, and say 
what is required of you, for otherwise you must cer- 
tainly die.' 

" To which she answered with a loud voice, * Then, 
my lord, I will die.' 

" This was said when the door had been opened, so 
that her servants who were waiting for her heard what 
she said, and all burst into weeping. But the Council 
only said this to terrify her, for they did not commit 
her to prison, but sent her to the house of a certain 
gentleman in the city, and after being held there in 
custody for a time she was released, but on condition 
of remaining in London. And one of the principal 
Lords of the Council acknowledged to a friend that he 
had nothing against her, except that she was a stout 
Papist, going ahead of others, and, as it were, a leader 
in evil." 

What follows of Elizabeth's devotion to the cause, 
would not be likely to filter through; but the Beau- 
monts may have had their suspicions. According to 
Father Gerard : — 

" Immediately she was released from custody, know- 
ing that I was then in London, quite forgetful of her- 



56 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

self, she set about taking care of me, and provided all 
the furniture and other things necessary for my new 
house. Moreover, she sent me letters daily, recounting 
everything that occurred; and when she knew that I 
wished to cross the sea for a time, she bid me not spare 
expense, so that I secured a safe passage, for that she 
would pay everything, though it should cost five thou- 
sand florins, and in fact she sent me at once a 
thousand florins for my journey. I left her in care 
of Father Percy, who had already as my companion 
lived a long time at her house. There he still remains, 
and does much good. I went straight to Rome, and 
being sent back thence to these parts, was fixed at 
Louvain." ^ So much at present of Elizabeth. We 
shall hear of her, as did Beaumont, during the succeed- 
ing years. 

In the tribulations of Anne Vaux, his own first 
cousin, Francis must have been even more deeply inter- 
ested. That she was in communication with Fawkes 
had been discovered, November 5. She was appre- 
hended, committed to the care of Sir John Swynerton, 
but temporarily discharged. When Fawkes confessed, 
November 9, that the conspirators had been using a 
house of Father Garnet's at White Webbs, in Enfield 
Chace, the house called " Dr. Hewick's " was searched. 
" No papers nor munition found, but Popish books and 
relics, — ^and many trap-doors and secret passages." 
Garnet had escaped but, on examination of the servants, 
it developed that under the pseudonym of '' Meaze " he 
had taken the house " for his sister, Mrs. Perkins," — 
[and who should " Mrs. Perkins " turn out to be but 
1 Morris, pp. 413-414. 



ANNE VAUX AND FATHER GARNET 57 

Anne Vaux!] The books and relics are the property 
of " Mrs. Jennings," — [and who should she be but 
Anne's sister, Eleanor Brookesby!] "Mrs. Perkins 
spent a month at White Webbs lately;" and "three 
gentlemen [Catesby, Winter, and another] came to 
White Webbs, the day the King left Royston " [Octo- 
ber 31]. On November 2y, Sir Everard Digby's serv- 
ant deposes concerning Garnet that " Mrs. Ann 
Vaux doth usually goe with him whithersoever he 
goethe." On January 19, as we have seen, warrants 
are out for the arrest of Garnet. On January 30, he is 
taken with another Jesuit priest. Father Oldcorne, at 
Hindlip Hall, in Worcestershire, where for seven days 
and nights they have been buried in a closet, and nour- 
ished by broths conveyed to them by means of a quill 
which passed " through a little hole in a chimney that 
backed another chimney into a gentlewoman's cham- 
ber." True enough, the deposition, that whithersoever 
her beloved Father Superior " goethe, Mrs. Ann Vaux 
doth usually goe"; for she is the gentlewoman of the 
broths and quill, — she with Mrs. Abington, the sister 
of Monteagle. Garnet and Oldcorne are taken prison- 
ers to the Tower; and three weeks later Anne is in 
town again, communicating with Garnet by means of 
letters, ostensibly brief and patent, but eked out with 
tidings written in an invisible ink of orange-juice. On 
March 6, Garnet confesses that Mrs. Anne Vaux, alias 
Perkins, he, and Brookesby bear the expenses of White 
Webbs. On March 11, Anne being examined says that 
she keeps the place at her own expense ; that Catesby, 
Winter, and Tresham have been to her house, but that 
she knew nothing of the Plot; on the contrary, suspect- 



58 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

ing some mischief at one time, she had '' begged Garnet 
to prevent it." Examined again on March 24, she says 
that " Francis Tresham, her cousin, often visited her 
and Garnet at White Webbs, Erith, Wandsworth, etc., 
when Garnet would counsel him to be patient and quiet ; 
and that they also visited Tresham at his house in War- 
wickshire." Garnet's trial took place at Guildhall on 
March 28, Sir Edward Coke of the Inner Temple act- 
ing for the prosecution. Garnet acknowledged that the 
Plot had been conveyed to him by another priest 
[Greenway] in confession. He was convicted, how- 
ever, not for faihng to divulge that knowledge, but for 
failing to dissuade Catesby and the rest, both before 
and after he had gained knowledge from Greenway. 
He was executed on May 3. Of Anne's share in all 
that has preceded, Beaumont would by this date have 
known. One wonders whether he or his brother, John, 
ever learned the pathetic details of the final correspond- 
ence between Anne and the Father Superior. How, 
March 21, she wrote to him asking directions for the 
disposal of herself, and concluding that life without 
him was " not life but deathe." How, April 2, he 
replied with advice for her future ; and as to Oldcorne 
and himself, added that the former had *' dreamt there 
were two tabernacles prepared for them," How, the 
next day, she wrote again asking fuller directions and 
wishing Father Oldcorne had " dreamt there was a 
third seat " for her. And how, that same day, with 
loving thought for all details of her proceedings, and 
with sorrow for his own weakness under examination, 
the Father Superior sends his last word to her, — that 



WAS HIS BROTHER RECUSANT? 59 

he will '' die not as a victorious martyr, but as a pen- 
itent thief," — and bids her farewell. 

All this of the Harrowden cousins and their connec- 
tion with Catholicism and the Gunpowder Plot, I have 
included not only because it touches nearly upon the 
family interests and friendships of Beaumont's early 
years, but also because it throws light upon the circum- 
stances and feelings which prompted the satire of his 
first play, The IVoman-Hater (acted in 1607), where 
as we shall see he alludes with horror to the Plot itself, 
but holds up to ridicule the informers who swarmed the 
streets of London in the years succeeding, and trumped 
up charges of conspiracy and recusancy against un- 
offending persons, and so sought to deprive them, if 
not of life, of property. It is with some hesitancy, 
since the proof to me is not conclusive, that I suggest 
that the animus in this play against favourites and in- 
telligencers has perhaps more of a personal flavour than 
has hitherto been suspected. An entry from the 
Docquet, calendared with the State Papers, Domestic, 
of November 14, 1607, may indicate that John Beau- 
mont, the brother of Francis, though a Protestant, had 
in some way manifested sympathy with his Catholic rel- 
atives during the persecutions which follow^ed the dis- 
covery of the Gunpowder Plot: — "Gift to Sir Jas. 
Sempill of the King's two parts of the site of the late 
dissolved monastery of Grace-Dieu, and other lands in 
Leicester, in the hands of the Crown by the recusancy 
of John Beaumont." At first reading the John Beau- 
mont would appear to be Francis' grandfather, the 
Master of the Rolls. But the Master lost his lands not 



6o BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

for recusancy (or refusal on religious grounds to take 
the Oath of Allegiance, or attend the State Church), 
but for malfeasance in office, and that in 1552-3, while 
the Protestant Edward VI was King. He had no 
lands to lose after Mary mounted the throne, — even if 
as a Protestant he were recusant under a Catholic 
Queen. The recusancy seems to be of a date contem- 
poraneous with James's refusal, October 17, 1606, to 
take fines from recusants, the King, as the State Papers 
inform us, taking " two-thirds of their goods, lands, 
etc., instead." The " two-thirds " would appear to be 
the " two parts " of Grace-Dieu and other lands, speci- 
fied in the Gift ; and that the sufferer was Francis Beau- 
mont's brother is rendered the more likely by the fact 
that the beneficiary. Sir James Sempill, had been dis- 
tinguishing himself by hatred of Roman Catholics 
from November 16, 1605, on; and that on July 31, 
1609, he is again receiving grants "out of lands and 
goods of recusants, to be convicted at his charges." 

There is nothing, indeed, in the career of Beaumont's 
brother, John, as commonly recorded, or in the temper 
of his poetry to indicate a refusal on his part to dis- 
avow the supremacy of Rome in ecclesiastical affairs, 
or to attend regularly the services of the Protestant 
Church. His writings speak both loyalty and Protes- 
tant Christianity. But it is to be noted that not only 
many of his kinsmen but his wife, as well, belonged to 
families affiliated with Roman Catholicism, and that 
his eulogistic poems addressed to James are all of later 
years, — after his kinsman, Buckingham, had " drawn 
him from his silent cell," and " first inclined the 
anointed head to hear his rural songs, and read his 



WAS HIS BROTHER RECUSANT? 6i 

lines " ; also that it is only under James's successor that 
he is honoured by a baronetcy. It is, therefore, not at 
all impossible that, because of some careless or over- 
frank utterance of fellow-feeling for his Catholic con- 
nections, or of repugnance for the unusually savage 
measures adopted after the discovery of the Gun- 
powder Plot, he may have been accused of recusancy, 
deprived of part of his estate, and driven into the seclu- 
sion which he maintained at Grace-Dieu till 1616 or 
thereabout. 



CHAPTER V 
Fletcher's family, and his youth 

THE friendship between Francis Beaumont and 
John Fletcher may have commenced at any time 
after Francis became a member of the Inner Temple, 
in 1600, — probably not later than 1605, when Beau- 
mont was about twenty-one and Fletcher twenty-six. 
The latter was the son of *' a comely and courtly 
prelate," Richard, Bishop, successively of Bristol, 
Worcester, and London. Richard's father, also, 
had been a clerygyman; and Richard, himself, in his 
earlier years had been pensioner and scholar of Trin- 
ity, Cambridge (1563), then Fellow of Bene't Col- 
lege (Corpus Christi), then President of the 
College. In 1573 ^^ married Elizabeth Holland at 
Cranbrook in Kent, perhaps of the family of Hugh 
Holland, descended from the Earls of Kent, who later 
appears in the circle of Beaumont's acquaintance; be- 
came, next, minister of the church of Rye, Sussex, 
about fifteen miles south of Cranbrook; then, Chap- 
lain to the Queen; then, Dean of Peterborough. 
While he was officiating at Rye, in December 1579, 
John the fourth of nine children, was born. This 
John, the dramatist, is probably the " John Fletcher 
of London," who was admitted pensioner of Bene't 
College, Cambridge, in 1591, and, as if destined 

62 



FLETCHER'S FAMILY 63 

for holy orders, became two years later a Bible- 
clerk, reading the lessons in the services of the college 
chapel. At the time of his entering college, his father 
had risen to the bishopric of Bristol; and, later in 
1 591, had been made Lord High Almoner to the 
Queen; he had a house at Chelsea, and was near the 
court " w^here his presence was accustomed much to 
be." By 1593 the Bishop had been advanced to the 
diocese of Worcester; and we find him active in the 
House of Lords with the Archbishop of Canterbury 
in the proposal of severe measures against the Bar- 
rowists and Brownists.^ The next year he was 
elected Bishop of London, — succeeding John Aylmer, 
who had been tutor to Lady Jane Grey, — and was 
confirmed by royal assent in January 1595. From 
Sir John Harington's unfavourable account ^ it would 
appear that the Bishop owed his rapid promotion to 
the combination of great mind and small means which 
made him a fitting tool for " zealous courtiers whose 
devotion did serve them more to prey on the Church 
than pray in the Church." But his will, drawn in 
1593, shows him mindful of the poor, solicitous con- 
cerning the " Chrystian and godlie education " of his 
children and confident in the principles and promises 
of the Christian faith, — " this hope hath the God of 
all comforte laide upp in my breste." 

We have no record of John's proceeding to a degree. 
It is not unlikely that he left Cambridge for the city 
when his father attained the metropolitan see. From 
early years the boy had enjoyed every opportunity of 

'^Cal. State Papers (Dom.), April 7, 1593. 
^ Brief e View of the State of the Church. 



64 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

observing the ways of monarchs and courtiers, schol- 
ars and poets, as well as of princes of the Church. 
Since 1576, his father had ''lived in her highnes," 
the Queen's, " gratious aspect and favour." PrcBsul 
splendidus, says Camden. Eloquent, accomplished, 
courtly, lavish in hospitality and munificence, no won- 
der that he counted among his friends, Burghley, the 
Lord Treasurer, and Burghley's oldest son. Sir 
Thomas Cecil, Anthony Bacon, the brother of Sir 
Francis, and that princely second Earl of Essex, 
Robert Devereux, who had married the widow of 
Sir Philip Sidney, and with whom the lame but clever 
Anthony Bacon lived. Sir Francis Drake also was 
one of his friends and gave him a " ringe of golde " 
which he willed to one of his executors. Another of 
his *' loveinge freindes," and an assistant-executor of 
his will, was the learned and vigorous Dr. Richard 
Bancroft, his successor as Bishop of London and 
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. As for im- 
mediate literary connections, suffice it here to say that 
the Bishop's brother. Dr. Giles Fletcher, was a culti- 
vated diplomat and writer upon government, and that 
the sons of Dr. Giles were the clerical Spenserians, 
Phineas, but three years younger than his cousin the 
dramatist, — whose fisher-play Sicelides was acting at 
King's College, Cambridge, in the year of John's 
Chances in London, and whose Brittain's Ida is as 
light in its youthful eroticism as his Purple Island is 
ponderous in pedantic allegory, — and Giles, nine 
years younger than John, who was printing verses 
before John wrote his earliest play, and whose poem 
of Chrisfs Victorie was published, in 1610, a year or 



FLETCHER'S FAMILY 65 

so later than John's pastoral of The Faithfull Shep- 
heardesse. Bishop Fletcher could tell his sons stories 
of royalty, not only in affluence, but in distress; for 
when John was but eight years old the father as 
Dean of Peterborough was chaplain to Mary, Queen 
of Scots, at Fotheringay, adding to her distress " by 
the zeal with which he urged her to renounce the 
faith of Rome." It was he who when Mary's head 
was held up after the execution cried, " So perish all 
the Queen's enemies ! " ^ He could, also, tell them 
much about the great founder of the Dorset family, 
for at Fotheringay at the same time was' Thomas 
Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards first Earl of 
Dorset, who had come to announce to Mary, Queen 
of Scots, the sentence of death. 

From 1 59 1 on, the Bishop was experiencing the 
alternate '' smiles and frowns of royalty" in London; 
about the time that John left college more particularly 
the frowns. For, John's mother having died about 
the end of 1592, the Bishop had, in 1595, most un- 
wisely married Maria (daughter of John Giffard of 
Weston-under-Edge in Gloucestershire), the relict of a 
few months' standing of Sir Richard Baker of Sis- 
singhurst in Kent. The Bishop's acquaintance with 
this second wife, as well as with the first, probably de- 
rived from his father's incumbency as Vicar of the 
church in Cranbrook, Kent, which began in 1555 and 
was still existing as late as 1574. The young Richard 
would often have shuddered as a child before Bloody 
Baker's Prison with its iron-barred windows glower- 
ing from the parish church, for Sir John hated the 

^Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elisabeth, II, 506-510. 



66 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

primitive and pious Anabaptists who had taken up their 
abode about Cranbrook, and he hunted them down ; ^ 
and Richard would, as a lad, have walked the two miles 
across the clayey fields and through the low-lying 
woods with his father to the stately manor house, 
built by old Sir John Baker himself in the time 
of Edward VI, and have seen that distinguished 
personage who had been Attorney-General and Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer under Henry VIII, — and who 
as may be recalled was one of that Council of State, 
in 1553, which ratified and signed Edward VFs * devise 
for the succession ' making Lady Jane Grey inheritress 
of the crown. And when young Richard returned 
from his presidency of Bene't College, in 1573, to 
Cranbrook to marry Elizabeth Holland, he would 
have renewed acquaintance with Sir Richard, who had 
succeeded the " bloody " Sir John as master of Sis- 
singhurst, sixteen years before. He may for all we 
know have been present at the entertainment which 
that same year Sir Richard made for Queen Eliza- 
beth. Maria Giffard was twenty-four years old, then. 
Whether she was yet Lady Baker we do not know — 
but it is probable; and we may be sure that on his 
various visits to Cranbrook, the rising dean and bishop 
had frequent opportunity to meet her at Sissinghurst 
before his own wife's death, or the death of Sir Rich- 
ard in 1594. Since the sister of Sir Richard Baker, 
Cicely, was already the wife of Thomas Sackville, 
Lord Buckhurst, when, in 1586-7, Buckhurst and Rich- 
ard Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough, were thrown to- 
gether at Fotheringay, it is not unlikely that the closer 

^Sec the story in Camden Miscellany, III (1854). 




THOMAS SACKVILLE, FIRST EARL OF DORSET 

From the portrait in the possession of Lord Sackville, at Knole Park 



FLETCHER'S CONNECTIONS ^j 

association between the Fletchers and Lady Buck- 
hurst's sister-in-law of Sissinghurst grew out of this 
alHance of the Sackvilles with the Bakers. 

Lady Baker was in 1595 in conspicuous disfavour 
with Queen Elizabeth, and with the people too; for, 
if she was virtuous, as her nephew records,^ *' the more 
happy she in herself, though unhappy that the world 
did not believe it." ^ Certain it is, that in a contempo- 
rary satire she is thrice-damned as of the most ancient 
of disreputable professions, and once dignified as " my 
Lady Letcher." Though of unsavoury reputation, she 
was of fine appearance, and socially very well con- 
nected. Her brother. Sir George Giffard, was in serv- 
ice at Court under Elizabeth; and in Sackville, Lord 
Buckhurst, she had a brother-in-law, who was kinsman 
to the Queen, herself. But not only did the Queen 
dislike her, she disliked the idea of any of her prelates, 
especially her comely Bishop of London, marrying a 
second time, without her express consent. For a year 
after this second marriage the Bishop was suspended 
from his office. " Here of the Bishop was sadly sensi- 
ble," says Fuller, *' and seeking to lose his sorrow in 
a mist of smoak, died of the immoderate taking 
thereof." Sir John Harington, however, tells us that 
he regained the royal favour ; — " but, certain it is that 
(the Queen being pacified, and hee in great jollity 
with his faire Lady and her Carpets and Cushions in 
his bed-chamber) he died suddenly, taking Tobacco 
in his chaire, saying to his man that stood by him, 
whom he loved very well, ' Oh, boy, I die.' " 

1 Sir Richard Baker, in his Chronicle of the Kings of England, 

2 Fuller's Worthies, as cited by Dyce, I, x, xi. 



68 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

That was in 1596. The Bishop left little but his 
library and his debts. The former went to two of 
his sons, Nathaniel and John. The latter swallowed 
up his house at Chelsea with his other properties. 
The Bishop's brother and chief executor of the will, 
Giles, the diplomat, is soon memorializing the Queen 
for " some commiseration towards the orphans of the 
late Bishopp of London." He emphasizes the diminu- 
tion of the Bishop's worldy estate consequent upon 
his translation to the costly see of London, his ex- 
traordinary charges in the reparation of the four 
episcopal residences, his lavish expenditure in hospi- 
tality, his penitence for " the errour of his late mar- 
riage," and concludes : — " He hath left behinde him 8 
poore children, whereof divers are very young. His 
dettes due to the Queues Majestic and to other cred- 
itors are 1400/i or thereaboutes, his whole state is but 
one house wherein the widow claimeth her thirds, his 
plate valewed at 400U, his other stuffe at 500//.^' An- 
thony Bacon, who sympathized with the purpose of 
this memorial, enlisted the cooperation of Bishop 
Fletcher's powerful friend and his own patron, the 
Earl of Essex, who '' likewise represented to the Queen 
the case of the orphans ... in so favourable a light 
that she was inclin'd to relieve them;" but whether 
she did so or not, we are unable to discover.^ 

What John Fletcher, — a lad of seventeen, when, in 
1596, he was turned out of Fulham Palace and his 
father's private house in Chelsea, with its carpets and 

1 The materials as furnished by Dyce, B. and F., I, xiv-xv, 
from Birch's Mem. of Elisabeth, and the Bacon Papers in the 
Lambeth Library are confirmed by Cat. St. Papers (Dom.), 
June 1596, July 9, 1597, etc. 



FLETCHER'S CONNECTIONS 69 

cushions and the special ^' stayre and dore made of 
purpose ... in a bay window " for the entrance of 
Queen Elizabeth when she might deign, or did deign, 
to visit her unruly prelate, — what the lad of seventeen 
did for a living before we find him, about 1606 or 
1607, in the ranks of the dramatists, we have no means 
of knowing. Perhaps the remaining years of his boy- 
hood were spent with his uncle, Giles, and his young 
cousins, the coming poets, or with the aunt whom his 
father called " sister Pownell." The stepmother of 
eighteen months' duration is not likely with her luxu- 
rious tastes and questionable character to have tarried 
long in charge of the eight '' poore and fatherless 
children." She had children of her own by her pre- 
vious marriage, in whom to seek consolation, Griso- 
gone and Cicely Baker, then in their twenties, and 
devoted to her.^ And with one or both we may sur- 
mise that she resumed her life in Kent, or with the heir 
of sleepy Sissinghurst, making the most of her carpets 
and cushions and such of her " thirds " as she could 
recover, until — for she was but forty-seven — she 
might find more congenial comfort in a third marriage. 
Her permanent consoler was a certain Sir Stephen 
Thomhurst of Forde in the Isle of Thanet; and he, 
thirteen years after the death of her second husband, 
buried her in state in Canterbury Cathedral, 1609. 

In 1603 her sister-in-law, Cicely (Baker) Sackville, 
now Countess of Dorset and the Earl, her husband, 
that fine old dramatist of Beaumont's Inner Temple, 
and former acquaintance at Fotheringay of John 

1 As her monument in Canterbury would indicate. Hasted. 
Hist. Kent, XI, 397. 



70 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Fletcher's father, had taken possession of the manor 
of Knole, near Sevenoaks in Kent, where their de- 
scendants live to-day. Before 1609, Fletcher's step- 
sister Cicely, named after her aunt, the Countess, had 
become the Lady Cicely Blunt. Grisogone became the 
Lady Grisogone Lennard, having married, about 1 596, 
a great friend of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, 
and of his Countess (Sir Philip Sidney's sister), Sir 
Henry, the son of Sampson Lennard of Chevening and 
Knole. The Lennard estate lay but three and a half 
miles from that of their connections, the Dorsets, of 
Knole Park. If young Fletcher ever went down to see 
his stepmother at Sissinghurst, or his own mother's 
family in Cranbrook, he was but twenty-six miles by 
post-road from Chevening and still less from Aunt 
Cicely at Knole. Beaumont, himself, as we shall see, 
married the heiress of Sundridge Place a mile and a 
half south of Chevening, and but forty minutes across 
the fields from Knole. His sister Elizabeth, too, mar- 
ried a gentleman of one of the neighbouring parishes. 
The acquaintance of both our dramatists with Bakers 
and Sackvilles was enhanced by sympathies literary and 
dramatic. A still younger Sir Richard Baker, cousin 
to John Fletcher's stepsisters, and to the second and 
third Earls of Dorset, was an historian, a poet, and a 
student of the stage — on familiar terms with Tarle- 
ton, Burbadge, and Alleyn. And the literary tradi- 
tions handed down from Thomas Sackville, the author 
of Gorhodiic and The Mirror for Magistrates were 
not forgotten by his grandson, Richard, third Earl 
of Dorset, the contemporary of our dramatists, — for 
whom, if I am not mistaken, their portraits, now hang- 



FLETCHER'S CONNECTIONS 71 

ing in the dining-room of the Baron Sackville at Knole, 
were painted.-^ 

I have dwelt thus at length upon the conditions ante- 
cedent to, and investing, the youth of Beaumont and of 
Fletcher, because the documents already at hand, if 
read in the light of scientific biography and litera- 
ture, set before us with remarkable clearness the social 
and poetic background of their career as dramatists. 
When this background of birth, breeding, and family 
connection is filled in with the deeper colours of their 
life in London, its manners, experience, and asso- 
ciations, one may more readily comprehend why Dry- 
den says in comparing them with Shakespeare, 
^' they understood and imitated the conversation of 
gentlemen [of contemporary fashion] much better; 
whose wild debaucheries and quickness of wit in rep- 
artees, no poet before them could paint as they have 
done." 

1 For the Bakers and their connections, see Hasted, Hist. Kent, 
III, 77; IV, 374, et seq.; VII, loo-ioi ; for the Sackvilles. — 
Hasted, III, 73-82; for the Lennards. — Hasted, III, 108-116; the 
Peerages of ColHns, Burke, etc., and the articles in D. N. B. 
See also, below, Appendix, Table E. 



CHAPTER VI 

SOME EARLY PLAYS OF BEAUMONT AND OF FLETCHER 

T3EAUM0NT and Fletcher may have been friends 
^■^ by 1603 or 1604, — in all likelihood, as early as 
1605 when, as we have seen, Drayton and other 
" southern Shepherds " were by way of visiting the 
Beaumonts at Grace-Dieu. In that year Jonson's 
Volpone was acted for the first time; and one may 
divine from the famihar and affectionate terms 
in which our two young dramatists address the 
author upon the publication of the play in 1607 
that they had been acquainted not only with Jon- 
son but with one another for the two years past. 
We have no satisfactory proof of their co5peration 
in play- writing before 1606 or 1607. According to 
Dry den, — whose statements of fact are occasionally 
to be taken with a grain of salt, but who, in this in- 
stance, though writing almost sixty years after the 
event, is basing his assertion upon first-hand author- 
ity, — '' the first play that brought * them ' in esteem was 
their Philaster/' but " before that they had written 
two or three very unsuccessfully." Philaster, as I 
shall presently show, was, in all probability, first acted 
between December 7, 1609 and July 12, 1610. Be- 
fore 1609, however, each had written dramas inde- 
pendently, Beaumont The Woman-Hater and The 

72 



SOME EARLY PLAYS 73 

Knight of the Burning Pestle; Fletcher, The Faithfull 
Shepheardesse, and maybe one or two other plays. 
Our first evidence of their association in dramatic 
activity is the presence of Fletcher's hand, apparently 
as a reviser, in three scenes of The Woman-Hater, 
which was licensed for publication May 20, 1607, as 
" lately acted by the Children of Paul's." From con- 
temporary evidence we know, as did Dryden, that 
two of these plays, The Knight and Faithfull Shep- 
heardesse were ungraciously received; and Richard 
Brome, about fourteen years after Fletcher's death, 
suggests that perhaps Monsieur Thomas shared " the 
common fate." 

The Woman-Hater was the earliest play of either 
of our dramatists to find its way into print. 
Drayton's lines, already referred to, about " sweet 
Palmeo " imply that Beaumont was already known 
as a poet, before April 1606. A passage in the 
Prologue of The Woman-Hater seems, as Professor 
Thorndike has shown, to refer to the narrow escape 
of Jonson, Chapman, and Marston from having their 
ears cropped for an offense given to the King by 
their Eastward Hoe. If it does, ''he that made this 
play," undoubtedly Beaumont, made it after the pub- 
lication of Eastward Hoe in 1605. The title-page of 
1607 says that the play is given " as it hath been 
lately acted." The ridicule of intelligencers emu- 
lating some worthy men in this land " who have dis- 
covered things dangerously hanging over the State " 
has reference to the system of spying which assumed 
enormous proportions after the discovery of the Gun- 
powder Plot in November 1605. An allusion to 



74 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

King James's weakness for handsome young men, 
" Why may not / be a favourite in the sudden? " may 
very well refer, as Fleay has maintained, to the resto- 
ration to favour of Robert Ker (or Carr) of Fernie- 
hurst, afterwards Earl Somerset, — a page whom 
James had " brought with him from Scotland, and 
brought up of a child," ^ but had dismissed soon after 
his accession. It Vv^as at a tilting match, March 24, 
1607, that the youth "had the good fortune to break 
his leg in the presence of the King," and '' by his 
personal activity, strong animal spirits," and beauty, 
to attract his majesty anew, and on the spot. The 
beauty, Beaumont emphasizes as a requisite for royal 
favour. " Why may not / be a favourite on the 
sudden?" says the bloated, hungry courtier, "I see 
nothing against it." *' Not so, sir," replies Valore; 
*' I know you have not the face to be a favourite on 
the sudden." The fact that James did not make a 
knight bachelor of Carr till December of that year, 
would in no way invalidate a fling at the favour be- 
stowed upon him in March. Indeed Beaumont's slur 
in The Woman-Hater upon " the legs . . . very 
strangely become the legs of a knight and a courtier " 
might have applied to Carr as early as 1603, for on 
July 25 of that year James had made him a Knight of 
the Bath, — in the same batch, by the way, with a cer- 
tain Oliver Cromwell of Huntingdonshire.^ Without 

^The King's letter to Salisbury (undated, but of 1608). 
Gardiner, Hist. Engl. 1603-1642, II, 43-45. 

2 This much more distinguished favour has been overlooked 
by Thorndike and other critics. But it is possible that Shaw, 
Knights of England, I, 154, may be confounding him with an- 
other Carr, a favourite of Queen Anne's. 



" THE WOMAN-HATER " 75 

violating- the plague regulations, as laid down by the 
City, The Woman-Hater could have been acted during 
the six months following November 20, 1606. A pas- 
sage in Act ni, 2,^ which I shall presently quote in full, 
is, as has not previously been noticed, a manifest parody 
of one of Antony's speeches in Antony and Cleopatra ^ 
which, according to all evidence, was not acted before 
1607. It would appear, therefore, that Beaumont's 
first play was completed after January i, 1607, prob- 
ably after March 24, when Carr regained the royal 
favour, and was presented for the first time during the 
two months following the latter date. 

The Woman-Hater affords interesting glimpses of 
the author's observation, sometimes perhaps experi- 
ence, in town and country. " That I might be turned 
loose," says one of his dramatis personae, " to try my 
fortune amongst the whole fry in a college or an inn 
of court ! " And another, a gay young buck, — " I 
must take some of the common courses of our nobility, 
which is thus: If I can find no company that likes 
me, pluck off my hat-band, throw an old cloak over 
my face and, as if I would not be known, walk hastily 
through the streets till I be discovered : ' There goes 
Count Such-a-one,' says one ; ' There goes Count Such- 
a-one,' says another ; * Look how fast he goes,' says 
a third ; * There 's some great matters in hand, ques- 
tionless,' says a fourth ; — when all my business is to 
have them say so. This hath been used. Or, if I 
can find any company [acting at the theatre], I '11 after 
dinner to the stage to see a play; where, when I first 
enter, you shall have a murmur in the house ; every 

1 Dyce, B. and F., Vol. I, p. 53. ^ Act IV, 14, 50-54. 



y6 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

one that does not know, cries, ' What nobleman is 
that ? ' All the gallants on the stage, rise, vail to 
me, kiss their hand, offer me their places ; then I pick 
out some one whom I please to grace among the rest, 
take his seat, use it, throw my cloak over my face, and 
laugh at him; the poor gentleman imagines himself 
most highly graced, thinks all the auditors esteem 
him one of my bosom friends, and in right special 
regard with me." And again, and this is much like 
first-hand knowledge : " There is no poet acquainted 
with more shakings and quakings, towards the latter 
end of his new play (when he's in that case that he 
stands peeping betwixt the curtains, so fearfully that 
a bottle of ale cannot be opened but he thinks some- 
body hisses), than I am at this instant." And again, 
— ■ of the political spies, who had persecuted more than 
one of Beaumont's relatives and, according to tradi- 
tion, trumped up momentary trouble for our young 
dramatists themselves, a few years later : '' This 
fellow is a kind of informer, one that lives in ale- 
houses and taverns; and because he perceives some 
worthy men in this land, with much labour and great 
expense, to have discovered things dangerously hang- 
ing over the state, he thinks to discover as much 
out of the talk of drunkards in tap-houses. He 
brings me information, picked out of broken words 
in men's common talk, which with his malicious mis- 
application he hopes will seem dangerous; he doth, 
besides, bring me the names of all the young gen- 
tlemen in the city that use ordinaries or taverns, talk- 
ing (to my thinking) only as the freedom of their 
youth teach them without any further ends, for dan- 



" THE WOMAN-HATER " ^y 

gerous and seditious spirits." Much more in this 
kind, of city ways known to Beaumont; and, also, 
something of country ways, the table of the Leices- 
tershire squire — the Beaumonts of Coleorton and 
the Villierses of Brooksby, — and the hunting-break- 
fasts with which Grace-Dieu was familiar. The hun- 
gry courtier of the play vows to " keep a sumptuous 
house; a board groaning under the heavy burden of 
the beast that cheweth the cud, and the fowl that cut- 
teth the air. It shall not, like the table of a country- 
justice, be sprinkled over with all manner of cheap 
salads, sliced beef, giblets and pettitoes, to fill up room; 
nor shall there stand any great, cumbersome, uncut-up 
pies at the nether end, filled with moss and stones, 
partly to make a show with, partly to keep the lower 
mess [below the salt] from eating; nor shall my meal 
come in sneaking like the city-service, one dish a quar- 
ter of an hour after another, and gone as if they had 
appointed to meet there and mistook the hour; nor 
should it, like the new court-service, come in in haste, 
as if it fain would be gone again [whipped ofT by the 
waiters], all courses at once, like a hunting breakfast: 
but I would have my several courses and my 
dishes well filed [ordered] ; my first course 
shall be brought in after the ancient manner 
by a score of old blear-eyed serving-men in 
long blue coats." — And not a little of life at Court, 
and of the favourites with whom King James 
surrounded himself: — "They say one shall see 
fine sights at the Court ? I '11 tell you what you 
shall see. You shall see many faces of man's making, 
for you shall find very few as God left them: and you 



y^ BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

shall see many legs too; amongst the rest you shall 
behold one pair, the feet of which were in past times 
sockless, but are now, through the change of time 
(that alters all things), very strangely become the legs 
of a knight and a courtier; another pair you shall see, 
that were heir-apparent legs to a glover; these legs 
hope shortly to be honourable ; when they pass by they 
will bow, and the mouth to these legs will seem to 
offer you some courtship ; it will swear, but it will lie ; 
hear it not." 

Keen observation this, and a dramatist's acquaint- 
ance with many kinds of life ; the promise of a satiric 
mastery, and very vivid prose for a lad of twenty-three. 
The play is not, as a dramatic composition, of any 
peculiar distinction. Beaumont is still in his pupilage 
to the classics, and to Ben Jonson's comedy of humours. 
But the humours, though unoriginal and boyishly 
forced, are clearly defined; and the instinct for fun 
is irrepressible. The Woman-Hater, obsessed by the 
delusion that all w^omen are in pursuit, is admirably 
victimized by a witty and versatile heroine who has, 
with maliciously genial pretense, assumed the role of 
man-hunter. And to the main plot is loosely, but not 
altogether ineffectually, attached a highly diverting 
story which Beaumont has taken from the Latin trea- 
tise of Paulus Jovius on Roman fishes, or from some 
intermediate source. Like the Tamisius of the orig- 
inal, his Lazarillo, — whose prayer to the Goddess of 
Plenty is ever, " fill me this day with some rare deli- 
cates," — scours the city in fruitless quest of an um- 
brana's head. Finally, he is taken by intelligencers, 
spies in the service of the state, who construe his pas- 



" THE WOMAN-HATER " 79 

sion for the head of a fish as treason aimed at the head 
of the Duke. The comedy abounds in parody of 
verses well known at the time, of lines from Hamlet 
and Airs Well that End Wellj Othello ^ and Eastzvard 
Hoe ^ and bombastic catches from other plays. To me 
the most ludicrous bit of burlesque is of the mo- 
ment of last suspense in Antony and Cleopatra (IV, 
14 and 15) where Antony, thinking to die "after the 
high Roman fashion " which Cleopatra forthwith em- 
ulates, says " I come my queen," — 

Stay for me! 
Where souls do couch on flowers, we '11 hand in hand. 
And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze. 
Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops. 
And all the haunt [of Elysium] be ours. 

So Lazarillo, in awful apprehension lest his love, his 
fish-head, be eaten before he arrive, — 

If it be eaten, here he stands that is the most dejected, 
most unfortunate, miserable, accursed, forsaken slave 
this province yields ! I will not sure outlive it ; no, I 
will die bravely and like a Roman ; 

And after death, amidst the Elysian shades, 
I '11 meet my love again. 

Shakespeare's play was not entered for publication till 
May 20, 1608, but this passage shows that Beaumont 
had seen it at the Globe before May 20, 1607. 

I have no hesitation in assigning to the same year, 
1607, although most critics have dated it three or 

^Cf., Lazarillo's Farewells, Act III, 3. 



8o BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

four years later, Beaumont's admirable burlesque of 
contemporary bourgeois drama and chivalric romance, 
The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Evidence both 
external and internal, which I shall later state, points 
to its presentation by the Children of the Queen's 
Revels at Black friars while they were under the busi- 
ness management of Henry Evans and Robert Keysar, 
and before the temporary suppression of the company 
in March 1.608. The question of date has been compli- 
cated by the supposed indebtedness of the burlesque to 
Don Quixote; but I shall attempt to show, when I con- 
sider the play at length, that it has no verbal relation 
either to the original (1604) or the translation (1612) 
of Cervantes' story. The Knight of the Burning Pes- 
tle is in some respects of the same boyish tone and out- 
look upon the humours of life as The Woman-Hater, 
but it is incomparably more novel in conception, more 
varied in composition, and more effervescent in satire. 
It displays the Beaumont of twenty -two or -three 
as already an effective dramatist of contemporary 
manners and humours, a master of parody, side-long 
mirth, and ironic wit, before he joined forces with 
Fletcher and developed, in the treatment of more 
serious and romantic themes, the power of poetic char- 
acterization and the pathos that bespeak experience 
and reflection, — and, in the treatment of the comedy 
of life, the realism that proceeds from broad and sym- 
pathetic observation. The play, which as the pub- 
lisher of the first quarto, in 1613, tell us was "begot 
and borne in eight dales," was not a success; evi- 
dently because the public did not like the sport that it 
made of dramas and dramatists then popular; espe- 



'' KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE " 8i 

cially, did not stomach the ridicule of the bombast-lov- 
ing and romanticizing London citizen himself, — was 
not yet educated up to the humour; perhaps, because 
" hee . . . this unfortunate child . . . was so unlike 
his brethren." At any rate, according to Walter 
Burre, the publisher, in 1613, "the wide world for 
want of judgement, or not understanding the privy 
marke of Ironie about it (which showed it was no' of- 
spring of any vulgar braine) utterly rejected it." And 
Burre goes on to say in his Dedication of the quarto 
to Maister Robert Keysar : — " for want of acceptance 
it was even ready to give up the Ghost, and was in 
danger to have bene smothered in perpetuall oblivion, 
if you (out of your direct antipathy to ingratitude) 
had not bene moved both to relieve and cherish it: 
wherein I must needs commend both your judgement, 
understanding, and singular love to good wits." 

The rest of this Dedication is of great interest as 
bearing upon the date of the composition of the play; 
but it has been entirely misconstrued or else it gives 
us false information. That matter I shall discuss in 
connection with the sources and composition of the 
play.^ Suffice it to say here that The Knight fol- 
lowed The Travails of Three English Brothers, acted 
Tune 29, 1607, and that the Robert Keysar who res- 
cued the manuscript of The Knight from oblivion had, 
only in 1606 or 1607, acquired a financial interest in 
the Queen's Revels' Children, and was backing them 
during the last year of their occupancy of Blackfriars 
when they presented the play, and where only it was 
presented. 

1 See Chap. XXIV, below. 



82 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

In the same year, 1607, both young men are writing- 
commendatory verses for the first quarto of Ben Jon- 
son's Volpone, which had been acted in 1605. Beau- 
mont, with the confidence of intimacy, addresses Jon- 
son as *' Dear Friend," praises his " even work," 
deplores its failure with the many who " nothing 
can digest, but what 's obscene, or barks," and implies 
that he forbears to make them understand its merits 
purely in deference to Jonson's wiser judgment, — 

I would have shewn 
To all the world the art which thou alone 
Hast taught our tongue, the rules of time, of place 
And other rites, deliver'd with the grace 
Of comic style, which only is far more 
Than any English stage hath known before. 
But since our subtle gallants think it good 
To like of nought that may be understood . . . 

let us desire 

They may continue, simply to admire 
Fine clothes and strange words, 

and offensive personalities. 

Fletcher in a more epigrammatic appeal to '* The 
true master in his art, B. Jonson," prays him to for- 
give friends and foes alike, and then, those " who 
are nor worthy to be friends or foes." 

Concerning Fletcher's beginnings in composition the 
earliest date is suggested by a line of D'Avenant's, 
written many years after Fletcher's death (1625), 
" full twenty years he wore the bays." ^ It has been 

1 Prologue, for a revival, in 1649, of The Woman-Hater, which 
D'Avenant mistakenly attributes to Fletcher. 



FLETCHER'S " SHEPHEARDESSE " 83 

conjectured b}^ some that the elder of our dramatists 
was in the field as early as 1604, with his comedy of 
The Woman's Prize or The Tamer Tamed, — a well 
contrived and witty continuation of Shakespeare's 
Taming of the Shrew, — in which Maria, a cousin of 
Shakespeare's Katherine, now deceased, marries the 
bereaved Petruchio and effectively turns the tables 
upon him. If acted before 1607, The Woman's 
Prize was a Paul's Boys' or Queen's Revels' play. But 
while the upper limit of the play is fixed by the mention 
of the siege of Ostend, 1604, other references and the 
literary style point to 1610, even to 1614, as the date 
of composition or revision.^ 

It is likely that Fletcher was writing plays before 
1608, but what we do not know. In that year was 
acted the pastoral drama of The Faith full Shepheard- 
esse, a composition entirely his own. This delicate 
confection of sensual desire, ideal love, translunar 
chastity, and subacid cynicism regarding '' all ideas of 
chastity whatever," ^ was an experiment ; and a fail- 
ure upon the stage. It has, as I shall later emphasize, 
lyric and descriptive charm of surpassing merit, but 
it lacks, as does most of Fletcher's work, moral depth 
and emotional reality ; and following, as it did, a lit- 
erary convention in design, it could not avail itself of 
the skill in dramatic device, and the racy flavour which 

1 Reasons for dating an earlier version of the play about 1604 
are given by Oliphant, Engl. Studien, XV, 338-339, and Thorn- 
dike, InU. of B. and F., 70-71. In its present form, however, the 
play dates later than Jonson's Epicoene, 1610. See Gayley, Rep. 
Eng. Com., Ill, Introd., § 15. 

2 I heartily concur with W. W. Greg's interpretation, Pastoral 
Poetry and Pastoral Drama, p. 274. 



84 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

a little later characterized his Monsieur Thomas. 
The date of its first performance is determined by the 
combined authority of the Stationers' Registers (from 
which we learn that the publishers of the first quarto, 
undated, but undoubtedly of 1609,^ were in unassisted 
partnership only from December 22, 1608 to July 20, 
1609), o^ ^ statement of Jonson to Drummond of 
Hawthornden that the play was written " ten years " 
before 16 18, and of commendatory verses to the first 
quarto of 1609, by the young actor-dramatist, Na- 
thaniel Field. If we may guide our calculations by 
the plague regulations of the time, it must have been 
acted before July 28, 1608. 

On the appearance of the first quarto, in 1609, 
Jonson sympathizing with '' the worthy author," on 
the ill reception of the pastoral when first performed, 
says: 

I, that am glad thy innocence was their guilt, 

for the rabble found not there the " vices, which they 
look'd for," I — 

Do crown thy murder'd poem ; which shall rise 

A glorified work to time, when fire 

Or moths shall eat what all these fools admire. 

And Francis Beaumont writing to " my friend, Mas- 
ter John Fletcher" speaks of his "undoubted wit" 
and " art," and rejoices that, if they should condemn 
the play now that it is printed. 

Your censurers must have the quality 
Of reading, which I am afraid is more 
Than half your shrewdest judges had before. 

1 See Fleay, Chron. Eng. Dr., I, 312, and Thorndike, InH. of 
B. and F., 64. 



FLETCHER'S " SHEPHEARDESSE " 85 

In the first quarto two commendatory poems are 
printed, the first by N. P., the second by the Homeric 
scholar and well known dramatist, George Chapman. 
The latter writes " to his loving friend. Master John 
Pletcher," in terms of generous encouragement and 
•glowing charm. Your pastoral, says he, is '' a poem 
and a play, too," — 

But because 
Your poem only hath by us applause, 
Renews the golden world, and holds through all 
The holy laws of homely pastoral, 
Where flowers and founts, and nymphs and semi-gods, 
And all the Graces find their old abodes, 
Where forests flourish but in endless verse, 
And meadows nothing fit for purchasers ; 
This iron age, that eats itself, will never 
Bite at your golden world; that other's ever 
Lov'd as itself. Then like your book, do you 
Live in old peace, and that for praise allow. 

If Jonson, Chapman, and Beaumont suspected the un- 
dercurrent of satire in this Pastoral, and they surely 
were not obtuse, they concealed the suspicion ad- 
mirably. As for Fletcher he continued to " live in 
old peace." " When his faire Shepheardesse on the 
guilty stage. Was martir'd between Ignorance and 
Rage. . . . Hee only as if unconcerned smil'd." An 
attitude toward the public that characterized him all 
through life. 

The admiration of younger men is shown in the 
respectful commendation of N. F. This is Nathaniel 
Field. He was acting with the Blackfriars' Boys 
since the days when Jonson presented Cynthia's Revels, 



86 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

and, as one of the Queen's Revels' Children, he 
had probably taken part in The Faithfull Shepheard- 
esse when the undiscerning public hissed it. Field 
came of good family, had been one of Mulcaster's pu- 
pils at the Merchant Taylors' School, and was beloved 
by Chapman and Jonson. He was then but twenty- 
two, — about three years younger than Fletcher's 
friend, Beaumont, — but for nine years gone he had 
been recognized as a genius among boy-actors. That 
the verses of so young a man should be accepted, and 
coupled with those of the thunder-girt Chapman, was 
to him a great and unexpected honour; and the youth 
expresses prettily his pride in being published by his 
" lov'd friend " in such distinguished literary com- 
pany,— 

Can my approovement, sir, be worth your thankes. 
Whose unknowne name, and Muse in swathing clowtes. 
Is not yet growne to strength, among these rankes 
To have a roome? 

Now he is planning to write dramas himself; and it 
is pleasant to note with what modesty he touches upon 
the project: 

But I must justlfie what privately 
I censur'd to you, my ambition is 
(Even by my hopes and love to Poesie) 
To live to perfect such a worke as this, 
Clad in such elegant proprietie 
Of words, including a morallitie,^ 
So sweete and profitable. 

He IS alluding to his not yet finished comedy, A 

1 Folio, 1647, ' mortallitie ' ; a misprint. 



FLETCHER'S " SHEPHEARDESSE " 87 

Woman is a Weather-cocke. The youth must have 
been close to Beaumont as well as to Fletcher ; he, soon 
afterwards, 1609-10, played the leading part in their 
Coxcomhe, — which, I think, was the earliest work 
planned and written by them in collaboration; and 
when, a little later, his own first comedy was acted 
by the Queen's Revels' Children no auditor of literary 
ear could have failed to detect, amid the manifest 
echoes of Chapman, Jonson, and Shakespeare, the 
flattering resemblance in diction, rhythm, and poetic 
fancy to the most characteristic features of Beau- 
mont's style. This is very interesting, because in an- 
other dramatic composition Fonre Playes in One, writ- 
ten in part by Fletcher, certain portions have so close 
a likeness to Beaumont's work, that until lately they 
have been mistakenly attributed to that poet and as- 
signed to this early period of his career. The portions 
of The Foure Playes not written by Fletcher were 
written by no other than Nat. Field. And since in 
Field's Address to the Reader of the Weather-cocke, 
licensed for publication November 23, 161 1, he still 
speaks as if the Weather-cocke were his only venture 
in play-writing, we may conclude that The Foure 
Playes in One was not put together before the end of 
161 1, or the beginning of 161 2. That series need not, 
therefore, be considered in the present place; all the 
more so, since Beaumont had in all probability noth- 
ing directly to do with its composition.^ 

Of the other dramas written by Fletcher alone and 
assigned by critics to his earlier period, that is to 
say before 1610, or even 161 1, the only one beside 

1 See Chap. XXIII, below. 



88 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

The Faithfull Shepheardesse that may with any de- 
gree of safety be admitted to consideration is a com- 
edy of romance, manners, and humours, Monsieur 
Thomas. The romance is a dehghtful story of self- 
abnegating love. The father, Valentine, and the son 
Francisco, supposed to have been drowned long ago, 
and now known (if the texts had only printed the 
play as Fletcher wrote it) as Callidon, a guest of Val- 
entine, love the same girl, the father's ward. This 
part of the play is executed with captivating grace. 
It shows that Fletcher had, from the first, an instinct 
for the dramatic handling of a complicated story, an 
eye for delicate and surprising situations, an apprecia- 
tion of chivalric honour and genuine passion, and a 
fancy fertile and playful. In the subplot the man- 
ners are such as would appeal to a Fletcher not yet 
thirty years of age; and the humours are those of a 
student of the earlier plays of Ben Jonson, and of Mar- 
ston — who ceased writing in 1607. It has indeed 
been asserted, but without much credibility, that ** the 
notion of the panerotic Hylas," who must always '' be 
courting wenches through key-holes," was taken from 
a character in Marston's Parasitaster, of 1606.^ The 
name of this Captain, Hylas, was in the mouth of 
Fletcher in those early days ; he uses it again in his part 
of the PhilasteVj written in 1609 or 1610, and else- 
where. The snatches of song and the names of bal- 
lads are those of contemporary popularity between 1606 
and 1609; ^^^ "^ two instances they are those of 
which Beaumont makes use in his Knight of the Burn- 
ing Pestle of 1607. The play was acted, too, appar- 
1 See Guskar, Anglia, XXVIII, XXIX. 



FLETCHER'S " MONSIEUR THOMAS " 89 

ently by the same company, the Queen's Revels' Chil- 
dren, and in the same house as was Beaumont's. It 
could not have been played by them at " the Private 
House in Black Fryers " later than March 1608, unless 
they squeezed it into that last month of 1609 which 
serves as a telescope basket for so many of the plays 
which critics cannot satisfactorily date. 

For my present purpose, which is to show how 
Fletcher, not assisted by Beaumont, wrote during his 
youth, it makes little difference whether Monsieur 
Thomas was written as early as 1608 or only be- 
fore 161 1. The fact is, however, that a line in the 
last scene, " Take her, Francisco, now no more 
young Callidon," shows clearly that Callidon, a name 
not occurring elsewhere in the play, and necessary 
to the dramatic complication, had been used by 
Fletcher in his first version; and when we put the 
names Callidon and Cellidee together (she is Fran- 
cisco's beloved) we are pointed at once to the source 
of the romantic plot — the Histoire de Celidee, 
Thamyre, et Calidon at the beginning of the Second 
Part of the Astree of the Marquis D'Urfe.^ The 
First Part of this voluminous pastoral romance had 
been published, probably in 1609, in an edition which 
is lost; but a second edition, dedicated to Henri IV, 
who died May 14, 16 10, appeared that year. Some 
of Fletcher's inspiration, as for the name and general 
characteristic of Hylas, was drawn from the First 
Part. The Second Part was not printed till later in 

iStiefel, Zeitschr. f. Vergl. Litt., XII (1898), 248; Engl. Stud., 
XXXVI; Hatcher, Anglia, Feb. 1907; and Macaulay, C.H.L., 
VI, 156. 



90 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

1610. It would, therefore, appear that Fletcher 
could not have written Monsieur Thomas before the 
latter date. On the other hand, as Dr. Upham ^ has 
indicated, the Astree had been read as early as Feb- 
ruary 12, 1607, by Ben Jonson's friend, William 
Drummond, who, on that day, writes about it critically 
to Sir George Keith. If the First Part had been cir- 
culated in manuscript, and read by an Englishman, in 
1607, it is not at all unlikely that the Second Part, 
too, of this most leisurely published romance, which 
did not get itself all into covers till 1647, ^^^^ httn 
read in manuscript by many men, French and English, 
long before its appearance in print, 1610; — may be 
by Fletcher himself, as early as 1608. Or he may 
have heard the story, as early as that, from some one 
who had read it. The fact that he alters some of 
the names, follows the plot but loosely, characterizes 
the personages not at all as if he had the original 
before him, and uses none of their diction, would 
favour the supposition that he is writing from hearsay, 
or from some second hand and condensed version of 
the story. 

No matter what the exact date of composition, 
Monsieur Thomas is the one play beside The Faithfiill 
Shepheardesse from which we may draw conclusions 
concerning the native tendencies of the young Fletcher. 
The subplot of Thomas, concocted with clever ease, 
and furnished with varied devices appropriate to 
comic effect — disguisings, mouse-traps, dupers duped, 
street- frolics and mock sentimental serenades, scaling- 
ladders, convents, and a blackamoor girl for a decoy- 

1 French Influence in English Literature, pp. 3CX), 308. 



FLETCHER'S " MONSIEUR THOMAS " 91 

duck, — is conceived in a rollicking spirit and executed 
in sprightly conversational style. Sir Adolphus Ward 
says that " as a picture of manners it is excelled by few 
other Elizabethan comedies." I am sorry that I can- 
not agree ; I call it low, or farcical comedy ; and though 
the ' manners ' be briskly and realistically imagined, 
I question their contemporary actuality, — even their 
dramatic probability. Amusing scapegraces like the 
hero of the title-part have existed in all periods of 
history; and fathers, who will not have their sons 
mollycoddles; and squires of dames, like the suscepti- 
ble Hylas. But manners, to be dramatically probable, 
must reflect the contacts of possible characters in a 
definite period. And no one can maintain that the 
contact of these persons with the women of the play 
is characterized by possibility. Or that these manners 
could, even in the beginning of James I's reign, have 
characterized a perceptible percentage of actual Lon- 
doners. Thomas, whose humour it is to assume sancti- 
mony for the purpose of vexing his father, and blas- 
phemy for the purpose of teasing his sweetheart — 
racking that " maiden's tender ears with damns and 
devils," — is no more grotesque than many a contem- 
porary embodiment of ' humour.' But what of his 
contacts with the " charming " Mary who " daily hopes 
his fair conversion " and has " a credit," and " loves 
where her modesty may live untainted " ; and, then, 
that she may ^' laugh an hour " admits him to her bed- 
chamber, having substituted for herself a negro wench ? 
And what of the contacts with his equally " modest " 
sister, Dorothy, who not only talks smut with him and 
with the " charming " Mary, but deems his fornication 



92 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

'' fine sport " and would act it if she were a man? I 
fear that much reading of decadent drama sometimes 
impairs the critical perception. In making allowance 
for what masquerades as historical probability one 
frequently accepts human improbabilities, and con- 
dones what should be condemned — even from the 
dramatic point of view. I have found it so in my 
own case. With all its picaresque quality, its jovial 
' humours ' and its racy fun, this play is sheer stage- 
rubbish : it has no basis in the general life of the 
class it purports to represent, no basis in actual man- 
ners, nor in likelihood or poetry. Its basis is in the 
uncritical and, to say the least, irresponsible taste of 
a theatre-going Rump which enjoyed the spurious 
localization, and attribution to others, of the imagin- 
ings of its own heart. 

The characters are well grouped; and the spirit of 
merriment prevails. The reversals of motive and for- 
tune, the recognitions and the denouement are as ex- 
cellently and puerilely absurd as could be desired of 
such an amalgam of romance and farcical intrigue. 
Richard Brome, writing in praise of the author for 
the quarto of 1639, implies that the play was not well 
received at its " first presenting," — *' when Ignorance 
was judge, and but a few What was legitimate, what 
bastard knew." That first presenting was between 
1608 and 1612 ; and the few might have cared more for 
Jonson's Every Man in his Humour or Volpone, or 
something by Shakespeare, or soon afterwards for 
Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster or A King and No 
King. But, as Brome assures us, " the world 's grown 
wiser now." That is to say, it had learned by 



FLETCHER'S " MONSIEUR THOMAS " 93 

1639 '' what was legitimate," and could believe that 
in Fletcher's Monsieur Thomas and the like, '' the 
Muses jointly did inspire His raptures only with 
their sacred fire." But even as transmogrified by 
D'Urfey and others the play did not survive its cen- 
tury. 

No better example could be afforded of the kind of 
comedy that Fletcher was capable of producing in his 
earlier period. It shows us with what ability he could 
dramatize a romantic tale; with what license as a 
realist imagine and portray an unmoral, when not im- 
moral, semblance of contemporary life. That was 
either before Beaumont had joined forces with him; 
or when Beaumont was not pruning his fancy; was 
not hanging " plummets " on his wit " to suppress Its 
too luxuriant-growing mightiness," nor persuading him 
that mirth might subsist " untainted with obscenity," 
and " strength and sweetness " and " high choice of 
brain " be " couched in every line." I am not claim- 
ing too much for Beaumont. In his later work as in 
his earlier there is the frank animalism, at times, of 
Elizabethan blood and humour; but one may search 
in vain his parts of the joint-plays as well as his youth- 
ful Knight of the Burning Pestle and those portions 
of The Wotnan-Hater which Fletcher did not touch, 
for the Jacobean salaciousness of Fletcher's Monsieur 
Thomas and the carnal cynicism which lurks beneath 
the pastoral garb of innocence even in The Faith full 
Shepheardesse; — characteristics that find utterance 
again, untrammeled, in the dramas written after the 
younger poet was dead, — and Fletcher could no 
longer, as in those earlier days, 



94 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

wisely submit each birth 
To knowing Beaumont e're it did come forth. 
Working againe untill he said 'twas fit; 
And make him the sobriety of his wit.^ 

During the years of Beaumont's apprenticeship to 
Poetry cloaked as Law things had changed but little in 
his world of the Inner Temple. In its parhament, Sir 
Edward Coke, judicial, intrepid, and devout is still 
most potent. The chamber, lodging, and rooms which 
his father, Mr. Justice Beaumont, and his uncle Henry 
had built and occupied near to Ram Alley in the north 
end of Fuller's Rents are still held by Richard Daveys, 
who as Treasurer moved into them in 1601. Dr. 
Richard Masters is still Master of the Temple ; and in 
the church, w^here Francis was obliged to receive the 
Sacrament at stated times, he, sitting perhaps by his 
uncle Henry's tomb, would hear the assistant minis- 
ters, Richard Evans and William Crashaw. The 
sacred place w^as still the refuge of outlaws from 
White friars who claimed the privilege of sanctuary. 
If Beaumont wished to steal, after hours, into the 
Alsatia beyond Fuller's Rents, he must skirt or pro- 
pitiate in 1607 as in 1602 the same Cerberus at the 
gates, — William Knight, the glover. Outside awaited 
him the hospitality of the Mitre Inn, or of Barrow at 
the " Cat and Fiddle," or of the slovenly Anthony 
Gibbes in his cook's shop of Ram Alley.^ 

1 Adapted from Cartwright in the Commendatory Poems, 
Folio of B. and F., 1647. 

2 Details in Inderwick, op, cit., Vols. I and II, passim. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE " BANKE-SIDE " AND THE PERIOD OF THE PART- 
NERSHIP 

AS we shall presently see, Beaumont during his 
career in London retained his connection with 
the Inner Temple, which would be his club; and it 
may be presumed that up to 1606 or 1607, his residence 
alternated between the Temple and his brother's home 
of Grace-Dieu. About 1609, however, he was surely 
collaborating with his friend, Fletcher, in the com- 
position of plays. And we may conjecture that, in 
that or the previous year, our Castor and Pollux were 
established in those historic lodgings in Southwark 
where, as Aubrey, writing more than half a century 
later, tells us, they lived in closest intimacy. That 
gossipy chronicler records the obvious in his " there 
was a wonderfull consimility of phansey between him 
[Beaumont] and Mr. Jo. Fletcher, which caused that 
dearnesse of friendship between them " ; ^ but when 
he proceeds " They lived together on the Banke-side, 
not far from the Play-house, both batchelors; lay 
together ( from Sir James Hales, etc. ) ; had one wench 
in the house between them, which they did so admire, 
the same cloaths and cloake, etc., between them," we 
feel that so far as inferences are concerned the ac- 

1 Aubrey's Brief Lives, Ed. Clark, I, 94-95. 

95 



96 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

count is to be taken with at least a morsel of reserve. 
Aubrey was not born till after both Beaumont and 
Fletcher were dead ; and, as Dyce pertinently remarks, 
"perhaps Aubrey's informant (Sir James Hales) 
knowing his ready credulity, purposely overcharged 
the picture of our poets' domestic establishment." To 
inquire too closely into gossip were folly; but it is 
only fair to recall that sixty years after Fletcher's 
death, popular tradition was content with conferring 
the " wench," exclusively upon him. Oldwit, in 
Shadwell's play of Bury-Fair (1689) says: *' I my- 
self, simple as I stand here, was a wit in the last age. 
I was created Ben Jonson's son, in the Apollo. I knew 
Fletcher, my friend Fletcher, and his maid Joan ; well, 
I shall never forget him : I have supped with him at 
his house on the Banke-side; he loved a fat loin of 
pork of all things in the world; and Joan his maid 
had her beer-glass of sack; and we all kissed her, i' 
faith, and were as merry as passed." ^ It is hardly 
necessary, in any case, to surmise with those who sniff 
up improprieties that the admirable services of the 
original " wench," whether Joan or another, far ex- 
ceeded the roasting of pork and the burning of sack 
for her two " batchelors." 

To the years 1609 and 1610 may be assigned with 
some show of confidence Beaumont and Fletcher's 
first significant romantic dramas The Coxcomhe and 
Philaster. The former was acted by the Children 
of her Majesty's Revels, I think before July 12, 1610. 
If at Blackfriars,- before January 4, 1610; if at 
Whitefriars, after January 4. There are grounds for 

1 Dyce, B. and F,, i, XXVI, m. 



LETTER TO BEN JONSON 97 

believing that it was the play upon which Fletcher 
and Beaumont were engaged in the country when 
Beaumont wrote a letter, justly famous, probably to- 
ward the end of 1609, to Ben Jonson; and, since the 
play was not well received, that it was one of the un- 
successful comedies which as Dryden says preceded 
Philaster. Philaster was acted at the Globe and 
Blackfriars by the King's Men, for the first time, it 
would appear, between December 7, 1609 and July 
12, 1 610. My reasons in detail for thus dating both 
of these dramas are given later. But a word about 
the Letter to Ben Jonson may be said here. 

It was first printed at the end of a play called 
The Nice Valour in the folio of 1647. Owing to a 
careless acceptance of the rubric prefixed to it by the 
publishers of that folio, historians have ordinarily 
dated its composition at too early a period. The 
poem itself mentions *' SutclifTe's wit," referring to 
three controversial tracts of the Dean of Exeter, 
printed in 1606; but Beaumont might jibe at the Dean's 
expense for years after 1606. The rubic inscribed 
a generation after the death of both our dramatists, 
and therefore of but secondary importance, tells us 
that the Letter was ''written, before he [Beaumont] 
and Master Fletcher came to London, with two of the 
precedent comedies, then not finished, which deferr'd 
their merry meetings at the Mermaid." We know 
that the young men had been in London for years 
before 1606. If the rubric has any meaning what- 
ever, it is merely that the customary convivialities at 
the Mermaid, as described in the Letter, had been 
interrupted by a visit to the country during which 



98 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

they were finishing two of the comedies which precede 
The Nice Valour in the folio; and it indicates a date 
not earlier than 1608, for the writing of the letter, 
and probably not later than July 16 10. For only 
three of the fifteen plays which appear in the folio 
before The Nice Valour could have been completed 
during the career of Beaumont as a dramatist, and 
none of the three antedates 1608. In two of these 
Beaumont had no hand : The Captain, which may 
have been composed as late as 161 1, and Beggars' 
Bush,^ which shows the collaboration of Massinger, 
but Fletcher's part of which may have been written 
in 1 60S. The only one of the " precedent comedies " 
in which we may be sure that Beaumont collaborated 
is The Coxcomhe. If, as I believe, it was acted first 
between December 1609 and July 1610^ it may well 
have been written in the country during the latter 
half of 1609, while the plague rate was exceptionally 
high in London. Both Beggars' Bush and The Cox- 
comhe abound in rural scenes ; but the latter especially, 
in scenes that might have been suggested by Grace- 
Dieu and its neighborhood. 

The rubric prefixed to the Letter by the publishers 
is of negligible authority. The ' me ' and ' us ' of 
the Letter itself do not necessarily designate Fletcher 
as the companion of Beaumont's rustication : they stand 
at one time for country-folk; at another for the Mer- 
maid circle, Jonson, Chapman, Fletcher, probably 
Shakespeare, Drayton, Cotton, Donne, Hugh Holland, 

1 Based upon Dekker's Bellman of London, 1608. Acted at 
Court, 1622. 

2 See Chapter XXV, below. 



LETTER TO BEN JONSON 99 

Tom Coryate, Richard Martin, Selden (of Beaumont's 
Inner Temple), and other famous wits and poets; 
at another for Jonson and Beaumont alone. The date 
of the poem must be determined from internal evi- 
dence. It is written with the careless ease of long- 
standing intimacy. It is of a genial, jocose, and fairly 
mature, epistolary style. It betrays the literary as- 
surance of one whose reputation is already established. 
Beaumont is in temporary banishment from London, 
for lack of funds — therefore, considerably later than 
1606, when he was presumably well off; for in that 
year he had just come into a quarter of his brother, 
Sir Henry's, private estate. He longs now for the 
stimulus of the merry meetings in Bread-street, as one 
whose wit has been sharpened by them for a long 
time past : 

Methinks the little wit I had is lost 
Since I saw you ; for Wit is like a Rest 
Held up at Tennis, which men do the best 
With the best gamesters ; . . . 

up here in Leicestershire " The Countrey Gentlemen 
begin to allow My wit for dry bobs." ** In this warm 
shine " of our hay-making season, soberly deferring 
to country knights, listening to hoary family-jests, 
drinking water mixed with claret-lees, " I lye and 
dream of your full Mermaid Wine " : 

What things have we seen 
Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
So nimble, and so full of subtill flame, 
As if that every one from whence they came 



loo BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 

And had resolv'd to live a foole, the rest 

Of his dull life. Then, when there hath been thrown 

Wit able enough to justifie the Town 

For three daies past, — wit that might warrant be 

For the whole City to talk foolishly 

Till that were cancell'd, — and, when that was gone, 

We left an Aire behind us, which alone 

Was able to make the two next Companies 

Right witty; though but downright fooles, more wise. 

When he remembers all this, he '' needs must cry," 
but one thought of Ben Jonson cheers him : 

Only strong Destiny, which all controuls, 

I hope hath left a better fate in store 

For me thy friend, than to live ever poore, 

Banisht unto this home. Fate once againe 

Bring me to thee, who canst make smooth and plaine 

The way of Knowledge for me, and then I, 

Who have no good but in thy company 

Protest it will my greatest comfort be 

To acknowledge all I have to flow from thee. 

Ben, when these Scaenes are perfect, we '11 taste wine ; 

I '11 drink thy Muses health, thou shalt quaff mine. 

The Letter was written after Beaumont's Muse had 
produced something w^orthy of a toast from Jonson, — 
the Woman-Hater and the Knight, for instance ( both 
marked by wit and by the discipline of Jonson) ; but 
not later than the end of 1612, for during most of 
161 3 Jonson was traveling in France as governor to 
Sir Walter Raleigh's " knavishly inclined " son ; and 
after February of that year Beaumont wrote so far 
as I venture to conclude but one drama. The Scornful 



"THE COXCOMBE" loi 

Ladie; and that does not precede this Letter in the 
folio of 1647; is not printed in that folio at all. Nor 
was this Letter of a disciple written later than the 
great Beaumont- Fletcher plays of 1610-1611, for then 
Jonson was praising Beaumont for " writing better " 
than he himself. If there is any truth at all in the 
rubric to the Letter, the " scenes " of which Beau- 
mont speaks as not yet " perfect " were of The Cox- 
combe; and evidence which I shall, in the proper place, 
adduce convinces me that that was first acted before 
March 25, 1610, perhaps before January 4. The 
play would, then, have been written about the end of 
1609. 

I do not wonder that, as the Prologue in the first 
folio tells us, it was " condemned by the ignorant 
multitude," not only because of its length, a fault re- 
moved in the editions which we possess, but because 
the larger part of the play is written by Fletcher, and 
in his most inartistic, and irrational, licentious vein. 
Beaumont, though admitted to the partnership, had 
not yet succeeded in hanging ** plummets " on his 
friend's luxuriance. He contented himself with con- 
tributing to a theme of Boccaccian cuckoldry the sub- 
plot of how Ricardo, drunk, loses his betrothed, and 
finds her again and is forgiven, — a little story that 
contains all the poignancy of sorrow and poppy of 
romance and poetry of innocence that make the com- 
edy readable and tolerable. 

As to the first production of the Philaster a word 
must be said here, because the event marks the earliest 
association, concerning which we have any assurance, 
of the young dramatists with Shakespeare. Until 



I02 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

about 1609 they appear to have written for the Paul's 
Boys, who acted, probably in their singing-school, un- 
til 1607; and for the Queen's Revels' Children who, 
under various managements, had been occupying 
Richard Burbadge's theatre of Blackfriars since 1597. 
Their association with the Paul's Boys would of it- 
self have brought them into touch with other Paul's 
dramatists, Dekker, Webster, Middleton, and Chap- 
man. In their association with the Queen's Revels' 
Children they had been thrown closely together with 
Chapman again, with Jonson, and with John Day, all 
of whom wrote for Blackfriars; and with Marston, 
who not only wTote plays for the Children but had a 
financial interest in the company. Some of these 
dramatists, — Jonson, for instance, and Webster, — 
had occasionally written for Shakespeare's company 
during these years; but we have no proof that Beau- 
mont and Fletcher had any connection with the King's 
Players of Shakespeare's company, as long as the 
Children's companies continued in their usual course 
at St. Paul's singing-school and Blackfriars. After 
1606, however, the Paul's Boys were on the wane. 
Perhaps they are to be indentified with the new Chil- 
dren of the King's Revels, and an occupancy of White- 
friars, in 1607; but that clue soon disappears. And as 
to the Queen's Revels' Children, we find that in April 
1608 they were suppressed for ridiculing royalty 
upon the stage. ^ Their manager, Henry Evans, to 
whom with three others Richard Burbadge had let 
Blackfriars in 1600, now sought to be set free from 

1 Despatch of the French Ambassador in London, April 5, 
1608, quoted by Collier, Hist. Eng. Dram, Poetry, I, 352. 



PLAYS FOR THE KING'S SERVANTS 103 

the contract; and in August 1608, the Burbadges 
(Richard and Cuthbert), Shakespeare, Heming, Con- 
dell, and Slye of the King's Company, took over the 
lease which still had many years to run.^ Shake- 
speare's company had been acting at the Burbadges' 
theatre of the Globe since 1599, — ^as the Lord Cham- 
berlain's till 1603; after that, as his Majesty's Serv- 
ants. Now Shakespeare's company took charge of 
Blackfriars, as well; and, under their management, 
for about a month between December 7, 1609 and 
January 4, 1610 the Queen's Revels' Children, being 
reinstated in royal favour, resumed their acting at 
Blackfriars. On the latter date, the Children as re- 
organized, opened at White friars under the manage- 
ment of Philip Rossiter and others; and among the 
first plays presented by them, there, were Jonson's 
Epicoene and, I believe, Beaumont and Fletcher's 
The Coxcomhe. 

But, in the process of readjustment at Blackfriars, 
our young partners in dramatic production must have 
been drawn into professional relationship with the 
members of Shakespeare's company and undoubtedly 
with Shakespeare himself. From the first quarto of 
Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding, published in 1620, 
we learn that this, the earliest of their great tragi- 
comedies, was acted not by the Queen's Revels' Chil- 
dren, but by the King's Players, and at the Globe. 
From the second quarto, of 1622, we learn that it was 
acted also at Blackfriars : it may indeed have been 
first presented there. Our earliest record of the play 

1 Answer of Heming and Biirbadge to Kirkham's complaint, 
1612, Greenstreet Papers in Fleay, Hist. Stage, p. 235. 



104 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

shows that it was in existence before October 8, 1610. 
The Scourge of Folly by John Davies of Hereford, 
entered for publication on that date, contains an epi- 
gram to " the well deserving Mr. John Fletcher," 
which runs — 

Love lies a-hleeding, if it should not prove 
Her utmost art to show why it doth love. 
Thou being the Subject (now), It raignes upon, 
Raign'st in Arte, Judgement, and Invention: 
For this I love thee; and can doe no lesse 
For thine as faire, as faithfull Sheepheardesse. 

Since there is nothing in Fhilaster, or Love Lies 
a-BleedinQj to indicate a date of composition earlier 
than 1608, and since this is the first of Beaumont and 
Fletcher's dramas to be performed by Shakespeare's 
company, we may be fairly certain that the perform- 
ance followed the readjustment of affairs between the 
Globe and Black friars in August of that year. Now, 
there had been regulations for years past of the City 
authorities and the Privy Council in accordance with 
which theatre in the City proper and the suburbs 
of Surrey and Middlesex were closed whenever the 
number of deaths by plague exceeded a certain limit 
per week. In and after 1608 this limit w^as set at 
forty; and it is probable that, in accordance with a 
still older regulation, the ban was not lifted until it 
was evident that the decrease in deaths was more than 
temporary.^ That actors sometimes performed at 
Court while the plague rate was still prohibitive in 
and about the City, does not by any means justify us 

^ See Murray, Eng. Dram. Comp., II, 171-191. 




THE GLOBE THEATRE, WITH ST. PAUL'S IN THE BACKGROUND 

From Vischer's long view of London, 1616 



" PHILASTER " 105 

in assuming that they were ever allowed at such times 
to play in theatres thronged by the public.^ Between 
August 8, 1608 and October 8, 1610, the only contin- 
uous period in which plays might have been presented 
by Shakespeare's company at the Globe or Black friars, 
without violating the plague law, was from December 
7, 1609 to July 12, 1610; and we therefore conclude 
that it was during those months that Beaumont and 
Fletcher's Philaster was first acted. The only other 
abatement of the plague that might have given promise 
of continuance was between March 2 and 23, 1609; 
but on March 9 the rate of deaths rose again above 
forty, and it is not likely that the authorities would 
have permitted the theatres to resume operations dur- 
ing those three weeks. ^ 

With Philaster Beaumont and Fletcher leaped into 
the foremost rank as dramatists. I have so much to 
say of this tragicomedy in my discussion of the author- 
ship of its successive scenes, that but a word may 
here be said concerning the reasons for its success. 
Hitherto, practically Shakespeare alone had written for 
the King's Servants romantic comedies of a serious 
cast; and they were generally based upon some well- 
known story. Here was a comedy of serious kind with 
a romantic and original plot, by authors comparatively 
new to the general public, written in a style refresh- 
ingly unhackneyed, and played in the best theatres 
and by the best company that London possessed. The 
Hamlet-like hero seeking his kingdom and his princess 

^ As suggested by Thorndike, Infi. B. and F. on Shakespeare, 
16-18. See Murray, Engl. Dram. Companies, II, 175. 

2 Further discussion of the Philaster date will be found in 
Chapter XXV, below. 



io6 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

— the daughter of the usurper — and, through mis- 
understandings and misadventures, tragic apprehen- 
sions, swiftly succeeding crises, bloodshed, riot, and 
surprising reversals of fortune, attaining both birth- 
right and love ; the pathetic innocence and nobly futile 
devotion of his girl-page; the triangular affair of the 
affections ; the humour of the secondary characters ; the 
allurements of spectacle and masque; the atmosphere 
of the palace, heroic, — of the country, idyllic, — of 
Mile-end and its roarers of the borough, somewhat 
burlesque, — the diapason of the poetry from bourdon 
to flute, — all combined to win immediate and long con- 
tinuing favour, both of the City and the Court. Beau- 
mont had, here, become to some extent " the sobriety 
of Fletcher's wit " ; he had restrained " his quick free 
will," — not, however, so much by pruning what 
Fletcher wrote as by admitting him to but one-quarter 
of the composition. Something of the intrigue, the 
bustle, the spectacle, the easy conversation are Fletch- 
er's ; and his, such sexual vulgarity — very little — as 
stamps a scene or two. The rest is Beaumont's. As 
in the two great romantic dramas which followed, 
and in Beaumont's subplot of The Coxcomhe, the 
story is of the authors' own invention. It is not nec- 
essary to trace the girl-page and her devotion to the 
Diana of Montemayor, or to Bandello, or even to 
Sidney's Arcadia. The girl-page was a commonplace 
of fiction at the time; and the differences in the con- 
duct of this part of the story are greater than the 
resemblances to any one of those sources. Much more 
evidently is the devoted Euphrasia-Bellario a 
younger sister of Shakespeare's Viola. But, in gen- 



" THE MAIDES TRAGEDY " 107 

eral, external influences bear upon details of character, 
situation, and device, not upon the construction of the 
play as a whole. 

Toward the end of 1610 or early in 161 1, the 
partner-dramatists gave Shakespeare's company an- 
other play, — in many respects their greatest, — The 
M aides Tragedy. Here, again, the novelty of the 
plot attracted, in a degree heightened even beyond that 
of Philaster. The terrible dilemma of the duped hus- 
band between allegiance to the King who has wronged 
him and assertion of his marital honour, the astound- 
ing effrontery of his adulterous wife, her gradual ac- 
quirement of a soul and her attempted expiation of lust 
by murder, the mingled nobility and unreason of her 
brother and her husband, and the pathetic devotion 
and self-provoked death of the hero's deserted sweet- 
heart, will be sufficiently discussed elsewhere. This 
was the highly seasoned fare that the Jacobean public 
desiderated, served in courses, if not more novel, at 
any rate of more startling variety than even Shake- 
speare had offered — whose devices, restrained within 
limit, these young dramatists were exaggerating to 
the n-th. degree. As four-fifths of the composition of 
this tragedy was Beaumont's, so, too, we may be sure, 
four-fifths of the conception and invention of the 
plot.^ I have remarked, incidentally, that none of 
the great Beaumont-Fletcher plots is borrowed. 
Nearly every play, on the other hand, which Fletcher 
contrived alone, or in company with others than 
Beaumont, borrows its plot, major and minor, from 
some well known source, classical, historical, French, 

iSee Chapter XXV, below. 



io8 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Spanish, or Italian. Mr. G. C. Macaulay states the 
bare truth, when he says that " in constructive faculty, 
at least, Beaumont was markedly superior to his col- 
league." Here there are traces, indeed, of external 
suggestion : something of Aspatia's career in relation 
to Amintor, who has deserted her, may be an echo of 
Parthenia's in the Arcadia; and the quarrel of Melan- 
tius and Amintor reminds one of that between Brutus 
and Cassius in Julius CcEsar; but the plot has no 
definite source. 

The characterization and the poetry, " the strength 
and sweetness, and high choice of brain " are Beau- 
mont's; so, too, the marvelous subtlety of dramatic 
device. Save in that one-fifth to which Fletcher was 
admitted. There Fletcher, in beauty and in tragic 
power, is giving us the best that he has so far pro- 
duced: over-histrionic, to be sure, but of victorious 
excellence. And that one-fifth, for the first and almost 
only time in Fletcher's career as a dramatist is " un- 
tainted by obscenity." 

In an anecdote preserved by Fuller, who v^as seven- 
teen years of age when Fletcher died, we may fancy 
that we catch a glimpse of our bachelors at work upon 
this very play. The dramatists *' meeting once in a 
Tavern to contrive the rude draught of a Tragedy, 
Fletcher undertook to Kill the King therein; whose 
words being overheard by a listener (though his Loy- 
alty not to be blamed herein) he was accused of high 
Treason, till the mistake soon appearing, that the plot 
was only against a Drammatick and Scenical King, 
all wound off" in merriment.^ History and fable have 

^Dyce, as above, B. and F., I, xxxii. 



" A KING AND NO KING '^ 109 

fastened similar stories upon famous men; but if 
this one is authentic it undoubtedly refers to the writ- 
ing of The M aides Tragedy, for, as we shall see, the 
killing of its King was one of the few scenes con- 
tributed by* Fletcher. And the story adds colour to 
the ridicule which Beaumont in 1607 had heaped 
upon the intelligencer that lives in ale-houses and tav- 
erns; . . . "and brings informations picked out of 
broken words in men's common talk." 

The connection thus formed with Shakespeare's 
company was continued by Beaumont, at any rate, 
until 1612, and by Fletcher as long as he lived. Be- 
fore the end of 161 1 the King's Players had presented 
to the public the last of this trio of dramatic master- 
pieces, A King and No King. In terrible fascination, 
this story of a man and woman struggling against 
love because they think they are brother and sister 
is as powerful as The Maides Tragedy. In poetry 
and in characterization, as well as in humour, it is 
grander than Philaster. But in beauty and pathos its 
subject did not permit it to equal either; and in 
denouement, tragicomic and perforce somewhat 
strained, it is surpassed by the Tragedy. Of its de- 
fects as well as merits, I have so much to say later, 
that I must refrain now. The plot is as striking an 
example of constructive invention as those that had 
preceded. Some of the names are to be found in 
Xenophon's Cyropwdeia (Books III-VI) and in 
Herodotus (Book VII) ; and hints for situation and 
characterization may have been derived from these 
sources, and the passion of Arbaces for his sup- 
posed sister from Fauchet's account of Thierry of 



no BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

France, — but such indebtedness is naught.^ Three- 
quarters of the play is Beaumont's; and that large 
portion includes the majestic passion and conflict, the 
tragic irony and suspense, of A King and No King; 
in fact, — the whole serious plot, and part of the hu- 
morous by-play, Fletcher's slight contribution is 
principally of complementary scenes and low comedy. 
In these the curb upon his fanciful rhetoric and hilari- 
ous wit has been somewhat relaxed. In the character 
of the roaring Bessus, Beaumont himself gives rein 
with the elan of the comic artist; for the Bessus of 
Beaumont's scenes would have gone on a strike if 
he had not been suffered to " talk bawdy " between 
brags. Beaumont for all his sobriety and clean 
mirth was not a prude ; and he was n't writing the 
psalms of Robert Wisdom. 

This play was as popular as those that had preceded. 
The King's Players acted it at Court in December of 
the year in which it had been first performed. And 
between October 1612 and March 1613, assisting in 
the festivities for the marriage of the Princess Eliza- 
beth with the Elector Palatine, they presented before 
royalty all three of the great Beaumont- Fletcher plays. 
These were numbers in a series of thirteen that in- 
cluded, as well, the Much Ado, Tempest, Winter's 
Tale, Merry Wives, Othello, and Julius Caesar of 
Shakespeare. They also presented about the same 
time, in a series of six acted before the King (includ- 
ing I Henry IV, Much Ado, and The Alchemist) , one 

1 See Alden's edition, p. 172 {Belles Letfres), and Thorndike's 
citation of Fauchet, Les Antiquites et Histoires Gauloises, etc. 
(1599), Inn. of B. and F., p. 82. 



"CUPID'S REVENGE" in 

of Fletcher's comedies of manners and intrigue, The 
Captaine, and a play utterly lost, called Cardenna, in 
which it is supposed that Fletcher collaborated with 
the Master himself. 

That our dramatists, however, after their associa- 
tion was formed with Shakespeare and his company, 
by no means severed their connection with the company 
for which they had written in their younger days, the 
Children of the Queen's Revels, appears from the fact 
that during the same festivities a tragedy written by 
them about 1611, Cupid's Rez^enge, was played by 
the Children three times, and their romantic comedy, 
The Coxcomb e twice; and that, in 161 5 or the be- 
ginning of 1 61 6, the Children presented at the new 
Blackfriars what was, probably, the last product of 
the Beaumont-Fletcher partnership, The Scornful 
Ladle. 

Neither Cupid's Revenge nor The Scornful Ladie 
(though the latter, at least, was very popular and had 
a long life upon the stage) is a drama of high dis- 
tinction. The former is a blend of two stories from 
Sidney's Arcadia, — the story of the vengeance of 
Cupid upon the princess Erona (Hidaspes in the play) 
who caused to be destroyed the images and pictures 
of Cupid, and was consequently doomed to an infatu- 
ation for a base-born man, — and the painful career 
of Plangus (Leucippus in the play) who, having an 
intrigue *' with a private man's wife " (the monstrous 
Bacha of the play) gave her up to his father, swearing 
to her virtue, only to find that she should attempt to 
renew her liaison with him and, failing, scheme his 
downfall. The dramatists made considerable altera- 



112 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

tion, and added to the sources. But though the main 
plot — that of Leucippus and Bacha — offered mag- 
nificent possibilities, they fail of realization. Beau- 
mont wrote about one-half of the play, and it 
is in his scenes that whatever there is of moral struggle 
and sublimity, of pathetic irony and of poetry, ap- 
pears. 

The Scornful Ladie, which I assign to this late date 
partly because of an allusion to the negotiations for 
a Spanish marriage, 1614-1616, is principally of 
Fletcher's composition. It is of the type of his earlier 
and later comedies of intrigue. Like most of them 
it is extremely well contrived for presentation upon 
the stage and it was, as I have said, most successful. 
The merit of the play lies, not in any element of 
poetry or vital romance, but in humorous and realistic 
characterization, easy dialogue, and clever device. 
The dramatists deserve all credit for the ingenious 
invention, for here again there is no known source. 
Beaumont's contribution, about one-third, is distin- 
guished by the observation and the vis comica already 
displayed in the Woman-Hater and the Knight of 
the Burning Pestle and King and No King. But he 
is not dominating the details. When they wrote a 
comedy of intrigue, Fletcher sat at the head of the 
table. It is possible, however, that some of the " rules 
and standard wit " which Francis was so soon to leave 
to his friend "in legacy" were here applied; for the 
play is less exuberantly reckless in tone than several 
which Fletcher wrote alone. The three masterpieces 
of romantic drama, Beaumont controlled in composi- 



"THE SCORNFUL LADIE '' 1 13 

tion, and revised. Of this play he did not finish the 
revision. It was written about 1614 or 161 5, after he 
had settled in the country with his wife, and not long 
before his death. ^ 

1 See below, Chapter XXVI. 



CHAPTER VIII 

RELATIONS WITH SHAKESPEARE, JONSON, AND OTHERS 
IN THE THEATRICAL WORLD 

THOUGH the young poets did not begin to write 
for the King's Men before 1609, it is impossible 
that they should not have met Shakespeare, face to 
face, earlier in the century, whether at the Mermaid 
in Bread-street, Cheapside, where perhaps befel those 
" wit-combates betwixt him and Ben Jonson," or about 
the Globe in Southwark or the theatre in Blackfriars, — 
which, though leased to the Revels' Children, belonged 
to Shakespeare's friend Richard Burbadge, — or at 
the lodgings with Mount joy the tiremaker, on the 
corner of Silver and Monkwell Streets, where the 
master had lived from 1598 to 1604, and where, for 
anything we know to the contrary, he continued to live 
for several years more.^ They would pass the house 
on their way from the Bankside north to St. Giles, 
Cripplegate, when they wished to observe what Juby 
and the rest of the Prince's Players were putting on 
at the Fortune, or on their way back to take ale with 
Jonson at his house in Blackfriars, or to follow Nat. 
Field or Carey, acting in one of their own or Jonson's 
plays at the private theatre close by. 

1 Wallace, New Shakespeare Discoveries, Harper's Maga., 
March, 1910. 

114 



ATTITUDE TOWARD SHAKESPEARE 115 

That the young poets, even during their discipleship 
to Jonson were familiar with the poetry and dramatic 
methods of Shakespeare the most cursory reader will 
observe. Their plays from the first, whether jointly 
or singly written, abound in reminiscences of his work. 
But more particularly is he echoed by Beaumont. The 
echo is sometimes of playful parody, as in the " huffing 
part " which the grocer's prentice of the Knight of the 
Burning Pestle steals from Hotspur : — 

By heaven, methinks it were an easie leap 

To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac'd Moon, 

Or dive into the bottom of the Sea, 

Where never fathome line toucht any ground, 

And pluck up drowned honour from the lake of Hell ; 

or as in The Woman-Hater, where it looks very much 
as if this stylist of twenty-two was poking fun at the 
circumlocutions of Shakespeare's Helena in All's Well 
that Ends Well. Labouring to say " two days " in ac- 
cents suitable to a monarch's ear, she had evolved: 

Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring 
Their fiery torches his diurnal ring. 
Ere twice in murk and accidental damp 
Moist Hesperus hath quenched his sleepy lamp ; 
Or four and twenty times the pilot's glass 
Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass, 
What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly. 

In terms strikingly reminiscent of this, Beaumont's 
courtier Valore instructs the gourmand of The 
Woman-Hater, how to address royalty : 



ii6 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

You must not talk to him [the Duke] 
As you doe to an ordinary man, 
Honest plain sence, but you must wind about him. 
For example : if he should aske you what o'clock it is, 
You must not say, " If it please your grace, 'tis nine " ; 
But thus, " Thrice three aclock, so please my Sovereign " ; 
Or thus, " Look how many Muses there doth dwell 
Upon the sweet banks of the learned Well, 
And just so many streaks the clock hath struck. 

And when the Duke asks Lazarillo, thus instructed, 
" how old are you ? " we can imagine with what mirth 
the graceless Beaumont puts into his mouth : 

Full eight and twenty several Almanacks 
Have been compiled all for several years. 
Since first I drew this breath; four prentiships 
Have I most truly served in this world ; 
And eight and twenty times hath Phoebus' car 
Run out his yearly course since — . 

Duke. I understand you, sir. 

Lucio. How like an ignorant poet he talks ! 

Is it possible that associating with the literary school 
of the day, his brother John, Drayton, Chapman, and 
Ben Jonson, the young satirist, here vents something 
like spleen? Or is this purely dramatic utterance? 

Like parodies of phrases in Hamlet, Antony and 
Cleopatra, and other Shakespearean plays ripple the 
stream of Beaumont's humour. They are, however, 
always good-natured. But if Beaumont laughs when 
Shakespeare exaggerates, he also pays him in his later 
plays the tribute of imitation in numerous poetic bor- 
rowings of serious lines and telling situations: as 



ATTITUDE TOWARD SHAKESPEARE 117 

where the King in Philaster tries to pray but, hke the 
kneeHng Claudius, despairs — 

How can I 
Looke to be heard of gods that must be just. 
Praying upon the ground I hold by wrong ? — 

or " in the Hamlet-like situation and character of 
Philaster " himself ; as, for instance, when to the usurp- 
ing King who has said of him, '* Sure hees possest," 
Philaster retorts : 

Yes, with my fathers spirit. Its here, O King, 
A dangerous spirit ! Now he tells me. King, 
I was a Kings heire, bids me be a King, 
And whispers to me, these are all my subjects. 
Tis strange he will not let me sleepe, but dives 
In to my fancy, and there gives me shapes 
That kneele and doe me service, cry me king : 
But I 'le suppresse him : he 's a factious spirit. 
And will undoe me. 

The resemblance of the controversy between Melantius 
and Amintor to that of Brutus with Cassius has 
already been noticed; and everyone will acknowledge 
the resemblance of the '' quizzical reserve " of his 
Scornful Lady to Olivia's, of Aspatia's melancholy in 
the M aides Tragedy to Ophelia's, and of Bellario's situ- 
ation in Philaster to that of Viola in Twelfth Night} 
This last play, indeed, acted, as we have seen, in the 

1 For these and other reminiscences of Shakespeare, see 
Alden's edition of Beaumont {Belles Lettres Series), XVI; Ma- 
caulay's Beaumont ; Leonhardt in Anglia, VIII, 424; Oliphant in 
Engl. Studien, XIV, 53-94, Koeppel's Quell en-studien in Miin- 
chener Beitrdge, XI, 



ii8 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Middle Temple when Beaumont was a freshman in 
the Inns of Court, affects Beaumont's method and 
style, more than any other save the Pericles (1607, 
or January to May 1608), which prepared the way 
for the more important later romantic dramas of 
Shakespeare himself as well as for those of Beaumont 
and Fletcher. 

During the years when Shakespeare's company was 
producing their romantic dramas, they were breathing, 
with Shakespeare, Burbadge, and Heming, the atmos- 
phere of the Globe and Blackfriars ; and, after Shake- 
speare had taken up a more continuous residence at 
Stratford, in 161 1, Fletcher, at any rate, not only kept 
in touch with the remaining shareholders and actors 
of the Globe but with the Master himself, and con- 
versed and wrote with him on various occasions. 
These may have fallen either at the New Place at 
Stratford, where the now wealthy country gentleman 
was wont to entertain his friends, or when Shakes- 
peare came to town — as in May 16 12. At that time 
his former host, Mountjoy's, son-in-law was suing the 
tiremaker for his wife's unpaid dower, and " William 
Shakespeare of Stratford upon Aven in the Countye of 
Warwicke, Gentleman " who had helped to make the 
marriage, was summoned as a witness.^ Or between 
July and November of that year, when the " base 
fellow " Kirkham was bringing against Burbadge and 
Heming a suit concerning the profits of the Black- 
friars theatre, in which as a shareholder Shakespeare, 
too, must have been interested ; and when Christopher 

^ Wallace, New Shakespeare Discoveries (Harper's Maga., 
March, 1910). 



FLETCHER AND SHAKESPEARE 119 

Brooke of the pastoral poets in Beaumont's Inns of 
Court was of the " councell " for Shakespeare's com- 
pany/ Or in March 161 3, when Shakespeare was 
negotiating for the house in Blackfriars which he 
bought that month from Henry Walker. In the latter 
year the King's Players performed two plays in the 
writing of which there is reason to believe that Shake- 
speare and Fletcher participated: The Two Noble 
Kinsmen, first published as *' by the memorable 
worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. 
William Shakespeare, gentlemen," in a quarto of 1634; 
and a lost play licensed for publication as the "' His- 
tory of Cardenio by Fletcher and Shakespeare," in 
1653. Of the former, critics are generally agreed that 
Fletcher wrote about a dozen scenes and that Shake- 
speare in all probability wrote others. Maybe, how- 
ever, Fletcher, and perhaps later Massinger, merely 
revised and completed Shakespeare's original draft of 
the play left in the company's hands. That The Two 
Noble Kinsmen borrows its antimasque from our 
friend Beaumont's Maske of the Inner Temple, which 
was presented in February 161 3, may be construed 
as indicating that he, too, still had some connection 
with Shakespeare's company. But it is more likely 
that he was now happily married and settled in Kent, 
and did n't care what they did with his plays. Proba- 
bly the Shakespeare-Fletcher play was acted soon after 
Beaumont's, and in the same year. With regard to the 
authorship of the Cardenio we have nothing but the 
publisher's statement ; but we know that the play was 
written after the appearance, in 161 2, of the story 

1 See the Greenstreet Papers, in Fleay, Hist. Stage, 239, 250. 



I20 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

upon which it is based, in Shelton's English transla- 
tion of the first part of Don Quixote; and that it was 
acted at Court by Shakespeare's and Fletcher's com- 
pany in May and June 1613. 

The partnership of Fletcher and Shakespeare in 
the writing of these two plays has been questioned, 
but as to their collaboration in a third, Henry VIII, 
there is not much possibility of doubt. In the con- 
ception of the leading characters Shakespeare is pres- 
ent, and in many of their finest lines, and specifically 
in at least five scenes ; while Fletcher appears in prac- 
tically all the rest. The play was acted by the King's 
Men at the Globe on June 29, 161 3, and was included 
as Shakespeare's by his judicious editors and intimate 
friends, Heming and Condell, in the folio of 1623. 

During these years of fruition the friendship with 
Jonson, who was writing at the time for both the 
companies to which our young dramatists gave their 
plays, continued apparently without interruption. It 
is attested by commendatory verses written by Beau- 
mont for The Silent Woman, which was acted early 
in 1 610, and by verses of both Fletcher and Beaumont 
prefixed to Jonson's tragedy of Catiline, published in 
161 1. On the latter occasion Beaumont commends 
Jonson's contempt for " the wild applause of common 
people," and declares that he is '' three ages yet from 
understood ; " while Fletcher even more enthusiastic- 
ally avers, — 

Thy labours shall outlive thee; and, like gold 
Stampt for continuance, shall be current where 
There is a sun, a people, or a year. 

The generous and graceful response of Ben to the 




BEN JON SON 
From the miniature belonging to Mr. Evelyn Shirley 



THE FRIENDSHIP WITH JONSON 121 

reverence of the younger of the twain appears in a 
tribute the date of which is uncertain, but which was 
included by the author among his Epigrams, entered 
in the Stationers' Registers, 1612. 

To Francis Beaumont. 
How I doe love thee, Beaumon^ and thy Muse, 
That unto me dost such religion use ! 
How I doe feare my selfe, that am not worth 
The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth ! 
At once thou mak'st me happie, and unmak'st; 
And giving largely to me, more thou tak'st. 
What fate is mine, that so it selfe bereaves? 
What art is thine, that so thy friend deceives? 
When even there, where most thou praisest mee, 
For writing better, I must envie thee. 

Since Jonson was not given to indiscriminate lauda- 
tion of his contemporaries in dramatic production, we 
may surmise that this tribute to the art of Beaumont 
follows rather than precedes the appearance of Philas- 
ter, and of perhaps both The M aides Tragedy and A 
King and No King. And whether there is any basis 
or not for the tradition handed down by Dryden ^ 
that Beaumont was '' so accurate a judge of plays that 
Ben Jonson, while he lived, submitted all his writings 
to his censure, and, 'tis thought, used his judgment in 
correcting, if not contriving, all his plots," — there is 
here evidence, sufficiently convincing, of the high es- 
teem in which '' the least indulgent thought " and the 
large " giving " of the brilliant and independent gen- 
tleman-dramatist were held by the acknowledged 
classicist and dictator of the stage. 

'^An Essay of Dramatic k Poesie. 



122 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

From the various sources already indicated and 
from contemporary testimony, later to be cited, it is 
easy to derive a definite conception of the world of 
dramatists and actors in which Beaumont and Fletcher 
moved. They knew, and were properly appraised 
by, Drayton, Jonson, Chapman, Shakespeare, Webster, 
Dekker, Heywood, Massinger, Field, Daborne, Mars- 
ton, Day, and Middleton, — with all of whom they were 
associated either in combats of poetry and wit or in 
the presentation of plays at Blackfriars, Whitefriars, 
or the Globe. Among actors their acquaintance in- 
cluded Field, Taylor, Carey, and others of the Queen's 
Revels' Children, and Richard Burbadge, Heming, 
Condell, Ostler, Cook, and Lowin of the King's Com- 
pany. In what esteem they were held during these 
years we have evidence in the verses already quoted 
from Drayton, Jonson, Chapman, and Field. In 
the generous dedication of The White Devil by John 
Webster, in 1612, we find them ranked with the best: 
" Detraction," says he, " is the sworne friend to ig- 
norance. For mine owne part I have ever truly cher- 
isht my good opinion of other mens worthy Labours, 
especially of that full and haightened stile of maister 
Chapman: The labour'd and understanding workes of 
maister Jonson: The no lesse worthy composures of 
the both worthily excellent Maister Beamont and 
Maister Fletcher: And lastly (without wrong last to 
be named), the right happy and copious industry of 
M. Shakespeare, M. Decker, and M. Heyzvood, wish- 
ing what I write may be read by their light : Protest- 
ing that, in the strength of mine owne judgement, I 



PLAYWRIGHTS AND PLAYERS 123 

know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my 
owne worke, yet to most of theirs I dare (without 
flattery) fix that of Ma/rtiall — non norunt, Haec 
monumenta mori. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE " MASQUE OF THE INNER TEMPLE " : THE PASTOR- 

ALISTS, AND OTHER CONTEMPORARIES AT 

THE INNS OF COURT 

OF royal patronage we have had evidence in the 
fact that during the festivities of October i6, 
1 612 to March i, 161 3, no fewer than five of the 
Beaumont-Fletcher plays were presented at Court, by 
the King's Servants and the Queen's Revels' Children, 
— some of them two and even three times. Our 
poets are accordingly regarded by the great as dram- 
atists of like distinction with Shakespeare, Jonson, 
and Chapman, the authors of most of the other plays 
then performed. 

Of the esteem in which Beaumont individually was 
held, not only at Court but by his fellows of the 
Inner Temple, evidence is afforded by the fact that 
when they were called upon, in company with the 
gentlemen of Gray's Inn, to celebrate the marriage, 
February 14, 1613, of the Princess Elizabeth to the 
Elector Palatine, with a masque, they did not, like 
the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn, go out of their 
own group of poets for a dramatist, but chose him. 
The selection was but natural : he had already con- 
tributed to The M aides Tragedy a masque of the 
very essence of dreams, executed with singular grace 
and melody. 

124 



"MASQUE OF THE INNER TEMPLE" 125 

The subject decided upon for the present gorgeous 
spectacle was the " marrying of the Thames to the 
Rhine." The structure and stage machinery were 
invented by Inigo Jones, who was, also, stage archi- 
tect for Chapman's rival masque of PluHis, presented 
on February 15, by the gentlemen of the Middle 
Temple and Lincoln's Inn. To the success of Beau- 
mont's production, that patron of masques, Sir Fran- 
cis Bacon, then his majesty's Solicitor-General, con- 
tributed in large measure : " You, Sir Francis Ba- 
con, especially," says the author in his Dedication 
of the published copy, " as you did then by your coun- 
tenance and loving affection advance it, so let your 
good word grace it and defend it, which is able to 
add value to the greatest and least matters." In a 
contemporary letter of John Chamberlain to Mistris 
Carleton, Bacon is called '' the chief contriver " of the 
spectacle; an attribution which leads us to infer that 
he " advanced " it not solely by '^ loving affection " 
but by funds for the tremendous expense. For, as 
we have already observed, in other cases, as of the 
Masque of Flowers, presented for a noble marriage 
in 1614 by Gray's Inn, Bacon is not only patron but 
purse, permitting no one to share expenses with him: 
'' Sir Francis Bacon," writes Chamberlain, '* prepares 
a masque to honour this marriage, which will stand 
him in above £2,000." 

Beaumont's masque, which was to have been per- 
formed at Whitehall on Tuesday evening, the i6th, 
had ill fortune on the first attempt. The gentlemen- 
masquers, desiring to vary their pomp from that of 
Lincoln's Inn and the Middle Temple, which had been 



126 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

on horse-back and in chariots, • made a progress by 
water from Winchester-House to Whitehall, seated 
in the King's royal barge, " attended with a multitude 
of barges and galleys, with all variety of loud music, 
and several peals of ordnance; and led by two ad- 
mirals." The royal family witnessed their approach; 
and, as Chamberlain in the letter mentioned above 
says, " they were receved at the privie stayres : and 
great expectation theyre was that they shold every 
way exceed theyre competitors that went before them 
both in devise daintines of apparell and above all in 
dauncing (wherein they are held excellent) and es- 
teemed far the properer men : but by what yll planet 
yt fell out I know not, they came home as they went 
with out doing anything, the reason whereof I cannot 
yet learne thoroughly, so but only was that the hall 
was so full that yt was not possible to avoyde yt or 
make roome for them ; besides that most of the Ladies 
were in the galleries to see them land, and could not 
get in, but the worst of all was that the king was 
so wearied and sleepie with sitting up almost two 
whole nights before that he had no edge to yt. Where- 
upon S*" Fra: Bacon adventured to interest his 
maiestie that by this disgrace he wold not as yt 
were burie them quicke; and I heare the king shold 
aunswer that then they must burie him quicke for he 
could last no longer, but with all gave them very 
goode wordes and appointed them to come again on 
saterday: but the grace of theyre maske is quite gon 
when theyre apparell hath ben already shewed and 
theyre devises vented, so that how yt will fall out, 
God knows, for they are much discouraged, and out 



"MASQUE OF THE INNER TEMPLE" 127 

of countenance; and the world sayes yt comes to 
passe after the old proverb — the properer men the 
worse lucke." ^ 

On that day, accordingly, the masque was presented, 
" in the new Banketting-House which for a kind of 
amends was granted to them " ; and with marked suc- 
cess. " At the entrance of their Majesties and their 
Highnesses," writes the Venetian ambassador to the 
Doge and Senate, May 10, 161 3, '' one saw the scene, 
with forests; on a sudden half of it changed to a 
great mountain with four springs at its feet. The 
subject of the Masque was that Jove and Juno de- 
siring to honour the wedding and the conjunction 
of two such noble rivers, the Thames and the Rhine, 
sent separately Mercury and Iris, who appeared; and 
Mercury then praised the couple and the Royal house, 
and wishing to make a ballet suitable to the conjunc- 
tion of two such streames, he summoned from the 
four fountains, whence they spring and which are fed 
by rain, four nymphs who hid among the clouds and 
the stars that ought to bring rain. They then danced, 
but Iris said that a dance of one sex only was not a 
live dance. Then appeared four cupids, while from 
the Temple of Jove, came five idols and they danced 
with the stars and the nymphs. Then Iris, after de- 
livering her speech, summoned Flora, caused a light 
rain to fall, and then came a dance of shepherds. 
Then in a moment the other half of the scene changed, 
and one saw a great plateau with two pavilions, and 

1 John Chamberlain to Mris. Carleton, i8 February, 1612-3, 
in State Papers (Domestic) James I, LXXII, No. 30. Quoted by 
Miss Sullivan, Court Masques of James I, p. 76 (1913)- 



128 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

in them one hundred and fifty Knights of Olympus, — 
then more tents, Hke a host encamped. On the higher 
ground was the Temple of Olympian Jove all adorned 
with statues of gold and silver, and served by a num- 
ber of priests with music and lights in golden Can- 
delabra. The knights were in long robes of silk and 
gold, the priests in gold and silver. The knights 
danced, their robes being looped up with silver, and 
their dance represented the introduction of the Olym- 
pian games into this kingdom. After the ballet was 
over their Majesties and their Highnesses passed into 
a great Hall especially built for the purpose, where 
were long tables laden with comfits and thousands of 
mottoes. After the King had made the round of the 
tables everything was in a moment rapaciously swept 
away." ^ 

Beaumont had introduced innovations — two anti- 
masques, or *' subtle, capricious dances " accompanied 
by spectacular or comic dumb-show, instead of one, 
and new and varied characters in each, instead of the 
stereotyped Witches, Satyrs, Follies, etc. His 
Nymphs, Hyades, blind Cupids, and half vivified 
Statuas from Jove's altar, of the first antimasque oc- 
casioned great amusement, so that the King called 
for them again at the end — " but one of the Statuas 
by that time was undressed." And the May-dance 
of the second, with its rural characters — Pedant, 
Lord and Lady of the May, country clown and wench, 
host and hostess, he-baboon and she-baboon, he- fool 
and she-fool — stirred laughter and applause that 

1 Foscarini in Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, XII, No. 
832. Quoted by Miss Sullivan, op. cit., p. 77. 



^'MASQUE OF THE INNER TEMPLE" 129 

drowned the music. The main masque was stately, 
and fitly symbolic of the occasion. And one at least 
of the songs, that sung by the twelve white-robed 
priests, each playing upon his lute, before Jupiter's 
altar, has the rare lyrical quality of Beaumont's best 
manner, — 

Shake off your heavy trance, 

And leap into a dance. 

Such as no mortals use to tread, 

Fit only for Apollo 
To play to, for the Moon to lead, 

And all the Stars to follow ! 

We may be sure that the poet received his meed of 
praise from King, Princess, and Elector, and from 
officials of the Court — the Earl of Nottingham, 
Lord Privy Seal, and Bacon, " the chief contriver " ; 
and that he sat high at the " solemn supper in the 
new Marriage-room " which the King made them on 
the Sunday, — maybe " at the same board '' with the 
King who doubtless jested much at the expense of 
Prince Charles and his followers. For they had to 
pay for the feast, *' having laid a wager for the charges, 
and lost it in running at the ring." ^ 

If it had not been customary for members of the 
Inns of Court to retain connection with the Society 
to which they belonged, even after they had ceased to 
be in residence, especially if still living in the City, 
we might infer from his authorship of this masque 
that Beaumont had kept in touch with the Inner Tem- 

^ Calendar State Papers (Domestic), 1611-1618, pp. 171, 172, 
175. 



I30 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

pie. Though he had not professed the law, the quid- 
dities of its parlance enliven various passages of his 
JVoman-Hater and of the plays which he later wrote 
with Fletcher. Whether he kept his name on the 
books or not, the Inner Temple was in a social sense 
his club for life; and it was to '* those Gentlemen that 
were his acquaintance there " that the publisher Mosely 
turned for help when searching for his portrait in 
1647. The students of his generation were by 161 2, 
many of them, utter barristers, ancients, and benchers : 
he would affiliate with them; and that he should be 
acquainted with the '' Gentlemen who were actors " 
in his masque goes without saying. This was an oc- 
casion of tremendous moment to the members of the 
allied Houses. They w^ere conferring the highest 
honour upon their poet, and every man on the books 
of each Inn knew him by name and face. One of the 
Fellows, John, afterwards Sir John, Fenner provides 
a messenger " to fetch M"" Beaumont," and advances 
loli. '^toward the mask business." Another, Lewis 
Hele is twice paid yoli. toward the same business. 
From Chamberlain's letter, we learn that the passage 
by water to Whitehall " cost them better than three 
hundred pound," — from two thousand to twenty-four 
hundred pounds, in the money of to-day. From the 
records of the Societies for " the loth of King James," 
we find that " the charge in apparell of the Actors in 
that great Mask at White-hall was supported " by 
each Society; "the Readers at Gray's Inn being each 
man assessed at 4/., the Ancients, and such as at that 
time were to be called Ancients, at 2/. 10^. apiece, 
the Barristers at 2/. a man, and the Stu- 



"MASQUE OF THE INNER TEMPLE" 131 

dents at 20^."; and that on May 4, 1613, the Inner 
Temple is still indebted over and besides the contribu- 
tion of the House *' for the late show and sports . . . 
not so little as 1200/f.," — that is to say, from seven to 
nine thousand pounds according our present valuation.-^ 
Beaumont in his Dedication of the quarto (published 
soon afterwards) to the worthy Sir Francis Bacon 
and the grave and learned Bench of the anciently- 
allied Houses of Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple, is 
addressing friends when he says " Yee that spared 
no time nor travell in the setting forth, ordering, and 
furnishing of this Masque . . . will not thinke much 
now to looke backe upon the effects of your owne care 
and worke : for that whereof the successe was then 
doubtfull, is now happily performed and gratiously 
accepted. And that which you were then to thinke 
of in straites of time, you may now peruse at leysure." 
Of the gentlemen-masquers, and " the towardly 
yoong, active, gallant Gentlemen of the same houses," 
who, as their convoy " set forth from Winchester- 
House which was the Rende voiis towards the Court, 
about seven of the clock at night," on that occasion, 
the most directly interested in the event would be a 
group of literary friends of which the central figure 
was William Browne of Tavistock. He had been 
at Clifford's Inn, one of the preparatory schools for 
the Inner Temple, on the other side of Fleet Street, 
since about 1608, had migrated to the Inner Temple 
in November 161 1, and had been admitted a member 

^ Dugdale's Origines Juridicales, as cited by Dyce, B. and F., 
II, 453. Inderwick, op. cit., II, xxxix-xlii, 72, 77, etc. Douth- 
waite, op. cit., 231. Nichols's Progresses of King James, II, 566, 
591. 



132 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

in March 1612. He was some five years younger than 
Beaumont, and, like Beaumont, was at just that time 
on intimate terms of friendship with the last of the 
Elizabethan pastoralists, Michael Drayton, — on terms 
of reciprocal admiration and friendship also with 
Beaumont's dramatic associates, Jonson and Chapman ; 
and he had himself, in 1613, been engaged for three 
years upon the composition of the charming First 
Book of his Britannia's Pastorals. In a letter written 
some years later to a lover of the Pastoral, — the trans- 
lator of Tasso's Aminta, Henery Reynolds, Esq., — Of 
Poets and Poesy, and published in 1627, Drayton 
couples William Browne so closely with Sir John 
and Francis Beaumont that even if the trio were not, 
in various ways, affiliated with the same legal Society 
we could not escape the conclusion that the brothers 
were near and dear to Browne. " Then," writes Dray- 
ton, after mentioning other literary acquaintances, — 

Then the two Beaumonts and my Browne arose, 
My deare companions whom I freely chose 
My bosome friends ; and in their severall wayes, 
Rightly borne Poets, and in these last dayes. 
Men of much note, and no lesse nobler parts, — 
Such as have freely tould to me their hearts, 
As I have mine to them. 

We may proceed upon the assumption that it would 
have been impossible for these bosom friends of Dray- 
ton, members of the same club, not to have known 
each other. Especially, if we recall that Browne was 
a literary disciple of Fletcher in pastoral poetry, be- 
tween 1 6 10 and 161 6, and that he had Beaumont's 



BROWNE AND THE PASTORALISTS 133 

masque and poetic fame in mind when, in the Dedi- 
cation of his own Masque of Ulysses and Circe, pre- 
sented by the same Society of the Inner Temple not 
quite two years later, January 13, 1615, he said, "If 
it degenerate in kind from those other our Society 
hath produced, blame yourselves for not seeking to 
a happier Muse." 

I am at pains thus to emphasize the acquaintance of 
Browne and Beaumont, because our acquaintance with 
the latter is enriched if we may regard him as famil- 
iarly associated with the literary coterie of the Inns of 
Court. Browne and Beaumont had friends in com- 
mon beside Drayton, Chapman, and Jonson. To, and 
of, Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Philip Sidney, Beau- 
mont writes, as we shall presently notice, in terms of 
admiration and intimacy. And it is for Mary, the 
sister of Sir Philip, that William Browne composes, 
in or after 1621, the immemorial epitaph, 

Underneath this sable hearse 
Lies the subject of all verse: 
Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother ; 
Death, ere thou hast slain another, 
Fair, and learn'd, and good as shee 
Time shall throw his dart at thee. 

To this Pembroke, William Herbert, third Earl, 
Browne dedicates the Second Book of the Pastorals, 
1 61 6, which contains the beautiful tribute to Sidney 
and his Arcadia; and Pembroke shows his regard for 
the young poet by appointing him tutor to a wealthy 
ward, and later taking him into the service of his 
own family at Wilton. In 161 4 John Davies of Here- 



134 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

ford wrote the third eclogue appended to Browne's 
Shepherd's Pipe, in which he figures as old Wernock, 
'and Browne as Willy; and, in 1616, commendatory 
verses to the Second Book of Browne's Pastorals, — 
beginning " Pipe on, sweet swaine." He had already 
in 1610, addressed "the most ingenious Mr. Francis 
Beaumont " in an epigram of like familiarity and 
devotion : 

Some that thy name abbreviate, call thee Franck: 
So may they well, if they respect thy witt ; 

For like rich corne (that some fools call too ranck) 
All cleane Wit-reapers still are griping it; 

And could I sow for thee to reape and use, 

I should esteeme it manna for the Muse.^ 

Another of this little group of late Spenserian pas- 
toralists was, as we shall later see, an admirer of 
Beaumont. This is William Basse, probably the com- 
poser of the lines In Landem Aiithoris, signed W. B., 
and prefixed to the 1602 edition of Salmacis and Her- 
maphrodiUis. With the commendatory verses of Da- 
vies, George Wither, Thomas Wenman, and others 
in Browne's Second Book of the Pastorals, appear 
some again signed W. B. " It is just possible,'* ac- 
cording to the most recent editor of Browne's poems,^ 
'' that Basse and Browne were kinsmen." It is cer- 
tain that Basse was a retainer in the family of the 
poetic Thomas Wenman who was Browne's contem- 
porary at the Inner Temple. Basse, himself, had 

1 To Worthy Persons, in the volume entitled The Scourge of 
Folly. 

2 Gordon Goodwin, in The Muses' Library, 1894, p. 132. 



BROWNE AND THE PASTORALISTS 135 

published three pastoral elegies in 1602, and he was 
still writing pastorals half a century later. Another 
of this group, George Wither, had since 1606 been of 
one of the adjoining Inns of Chancery. He is the 
Roget, Thyrsis, Philarete of this pastoral field. In 
1 6 14, he wrote the third eclogue supplementary to 
Browne's Shepherd's Pipe; and in 161 5 he was a neigh- 
bor of the Inner Temple poets, at Lincoln's Inn. In 
that eclogue he speaks of a Valentine on " the Wed- 
ding of fair Thame and Rhine " which he had com- 
posed on the occasion of the royal marriage; and in 
the first Epithalamium of the Valentine, he refers ex- 
plicitly to the masques of Chapman and Beaumont. 
He must have known both those " Heliconian wits." 
** I 'm none," he says with self-depreciation, — 

I 'm none of those that have the means or place 

With shows of cost to do your nuptials grace; 

But only master of mine own desire. 

Am hither come with others to admire. 

I am not of those Heliconian wits. 

Whose pleasing strains the court's known humour fits. 

But a poor rural shepherd, that for need 

Can make sheep music on an oaten reed. 

This " faithful though an humble swain " was of dis- 
tinctive repute among Beaumont's associates by 161 5 : 
no less for the lyric ease of his Shepherd's Hunting, or 
of his 

Shall I wasting in despair 

Die because a woman 's fair ? — 

than for the "plain, moral speaking" of the Abuses 
Stript and Whipt that in 161 3-14 had brought him a 



136 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

year's imprisonment in the Marshalsea. Jonson later 
" personates " him as Chronomastix, or whipper of 
the times, in a masque at Court ; and Beaumont's, and 
Fletcher's friend, Massinger, introduces him by allu- 
sion, in his Duke of Milan, about 1620, '^ I have had 
a fellow," says the Officer in Act III, ii, of that play — 

That could endite forsooth and make fine metres 
To tinkle in the ears of ignorant madams, 
That for defaming of great men, was sent me 
Threadbare and lousy. 

Still another member of this circle of poets asso- 
ciated with the Inns of Court is the Cuddy of the 
pastoral poems, the intimate friend of Wither and 
Browne, — Christopher Brooke, who, though he does 
not cut much of a figure in his Elegies, or in his Ghost 
of Richard III, was a lovable and hearty friend, and 
a distinguished Bencher of Lincoln's Inn. That 
Brooke was intimate with Shakespeare's company of 
the King's Servants, at just the period that Beaumont 
and Fletcher were most closely associated with that 
company, we have already noticed. As one of the 
barristers who, in 1612, defended Burbadge and Hem- 
ing against the bill of complaint brought by Kirkham 
for recovery of profits in the Black friars theatre, he 
had much to do with having the " plaintiff's bill cleerly 
and absolutely dismissed out of this courte." ^ 

This community of friendship with Browne and 

Browne's circle gives us, by inference, a clue to an 

extended list of the gentlemen of London with whom 

Beaumont cannot have altogether failed to be ac- 

1 See Greenstreet Papers, VIII, Fleay, Hist. Stage, 250. 



COTERIE OF THE INNS OF COURT 137 

quainted. Browne succeeded Beaumont as poet of 
the Inner Temple, and the friends of the former in 
that Society would be known to the latter. 

Among those who wrote verses laudatory of 
Browne's Pastorals between 161 3 and 16 16, was his 
" learned friend," John Selden, the jurist and anti- 
quary, w^hose '■ chamber was in the paper buildings 
which looke towards the garden." He kept, says Au- 
brey, '' a plentifull table, and was never without 
learned company " : frequently that of Jonson, Dray- 
ton, and Camden; and, we may be certain, of John 
Fletcher, too; for on his mother's side, Selden as his 
coat of arms and epitaph prove, and as Hasted tells us 
in his History of Kent, w^as of the " equestrian " family 
of Bakers to which Fletcher's stepsisters belonged. 
Selden was of Beaumont's age to a year, and had been 
of the Society since 1604. Fo^ Browne's book Ed- 
ward Heyward, also, wrote verses, — Selden's most 
devoted friend and chamber- fellow," — to whom 
(Aubrey again) " he dedicated his Titles of Honour,'' 
1614. Heyward came from Norfolk and was ad- 
mitted to the Inner Temple in 1604. And with Selden 
must be also bracketed, Thomas Wenman, of Oxford- 
shire ; for so Suckling brackets him in the Session of 
the Poets: 

The poets met the other day, 
And Apollo was at the meeting, they say . . . 
'Twas strange to see how they flocked together: 
There was Selden, and he stood next to the chaire. 
And Wenman not far off, which was very faire. 

Wenman came to the Inner Temple in 161 3; he ex- 



138 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

presses in his complimentary verses to Browne his 
wonder that the pastoraHst can frame such worthy- 
poetry while as yet " scarce a hair grows up thy chin 
to grace." Wenman was the son of that Sir Richard 
whose wife was implicated in the Gunpowder Plot by 
Mrs. [Elizabeth] Vaux. He succeeded to an Irish 
peerage in 1640. There was, also, Thomas Gardiner, 
the son of a rector in Essex. He came to the Inner 
Temple in 1609, and in 1641 was knighted for his 
loyalty to King Charles. There was, though not of 
the Inner Temple, Browne's favourite companion, Wil- 
liam Ferrar, the Alexis of the pastoral circle. Ferrar 
was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1610, and died 
young. He must have been a graceful and lovable 
youth, if we may judge from Wither's and Browne's 
tributes to him. Through his father, " an eminent 
London merchant, who was interested in the adven- 
tures of Hawkins, Drake, and Raleigh," Browne and 
Beaumont might, if in no other way, have met with Sir 
Richard and Sir Walter. There were, also, writing 
praises to Browne, the brothers Croke, sons of Sir John 
Croke of the King's Bench. They were both of 
Christ's Church, Oxford, Charles and Unton ; and they 
became students of the Inner Temple in 1609. Charles 
was something of a poet. In 161 3 he was Professor 
of Rhetoric at Gresham College; he took orders, and 
became a Fellow of Eton College; and during the 
Civil War fled to Ireland. Unton rose at the Bar, 
became a member of Parliament, '' aided the Parlia- 
mentarians during the Civil War and enjoyed the fa- 
vour of Cromwell." And there was Browne's dear 
friend, Thomas Manwood, who had entered the Inner 



COTERIE OF THE INNS OF COURT 139 

Temple in 161 1, and whose early death by drowning 
Browne bewails in the fourth eclogue of the Shep- 
herd's Pipe, — an elegy somewhat fantastic but beau- 
tifully sincere, and, in one or two of its fundamental 
concepts, decidedly reminiscent of Beaumont's elegy 
written the year before on the death of the Countess 
of Rutland. 

These are a few of the members of this Society 
whom Beaumont met whenever he visited the Inner 
Temple. It was such as they and their companions, 
many more of whom are mentioned in the Inner Tem- 
ple Records, and described by Mr. Gordon Goodwin 
in his edition of Browne's Poems, who set forth, or- 
dered, and furnished Beaumont's Masque of the Inner 
Temple; and who, as gentlemen-masquers, sailed with 
him in the royal barge to Whitehall, and happily per- 
formed the masque before the King and Queen, the 
Princess Elizabeth, and the Count Palatine, on Satur- 
day, the twentieth day of February 1613. 

Beaumont's friends were Fletcher's; and Fletcher 
must have known Browne. It has always seemed 
strange to me that, when enumerating in his Britan- 
nia's Pastorals the pastoral poets of England, — half 
a dozen of them, his personal acquaintances, — 
Browne should have omitted Fletcher to whom he was 
deeply indebted for literary inspiration. Between 
1 610 and 16 1 3 he had, in his First Book of Britannia's 
Pastorals (Song i, end; Song 2, beginning), borrowed 
the story of Marina and the River-God, as regards 
not only the main incident but also much of the poetic 
phrase, from the Faithfull Shepheardesse — the scene 
in which Fletcher's God of the River rescues Amoret 



140 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

and offers her his love. The borrowing is not at all 
a plagiarism, but an elaboration of the Amoret epi- 
sode; and, as such, the imitation is indirect homage to 
the quondam pastoralist living close by in Southwark. 
I hesitate to enter upon quest of literary surmise. But 
some young lion of research might be pardoned if he 
should undertake to prove that the description of the 
shepherd Remond which Browne introduces into his 
first Song just before this borrowing from Fletcher's 
pastoral drama is homage to Fletcher, pure and direct : 

Remond, young Remond, that full well could sing, 

And tune his pipe at Pan's birth carolling: 

Who for his nimble leaping, sweetest layes, 

A lawrell garland wore on holidayes; 

In framing of whose hand dame Nature swore 

That never was his like nor could be more.^ 

Conjectural reconstruction of literary relationships 
is perilously seductive. But it is only fair to apprise 
the young lion of the delightful certainty that though 
the trail may run up a tree, it abounds in alluring 
scents. He will find that no sooner has Browne's 
Marina concluded the adventure borrowed from 
Fletcher than she falls in with Remond's younger 
companion, " blithe Doridon," who, in the Second 
Book of the Pastorals, written in 1 6 14-15, swears 
fidelity to Remond — 

Entreats him then 
That he might be his partner, since no men 
Had cases liker ; he with him would goe — 
Weepe when he wept and sigh when he did so ; ^ 

1 Brit Past, I, i, 476. 2 /^,/^_^ u^ 2, 469. 



" REMOND " AND " DORIDON " ? 141 

and that, in the second Song of the First Book/- 
Doridon, who also is a poet, is described at 
a length not at all necessary to the narrative, and in 
terms that more than echo the description of the 
beauty of Hermaphroditus in the poem of that name 
which has been traditionally attributed to Beaumont. 
This Doridon is a genius : 

Upon this hill there sate a lovely swaine, 

As if that Nature thought it great disdaine 

That he should (so through her his genius told him) 

Take equall place with swaines, since she did hold him 

Her chiefest worke, and therefore thought it fit, 

That with inferiours he should never sit. . . . 

He is " fairest of men " ; when he pipes '' the wood's 
sweet quiresters " join in consort — *' A musicke that 
would ravish choisest eares." He is, as I have said, 
a poet, — 

And as when Plato did i' th' cradle thrive, 
Bees to his lips brought honey from their hive; 
So to this boy they came ; I know not whether 
They brought, or from his lips did honey gather. . . . 

He is also a master in the revels, 

His buskins (edg'd with silver) were of silke . . . 
Those buskins he had got and brought away 
For dancing best upon the revell day. 

Browne, by the way, wrote the Prefatory Address to 
this Book of Britannia's Pastorals, June 18, 161 3, only 
three months after Beaumont's Masque upon the 

iLl. 405-470. 



142 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

" revel day " was acted; and the book was licensed for 
printing, the same year, November 15. 

Returning to our young lion, he will, I fear me, 
exult (with lust of chase or laughter?) when in the 
third song of this book, he notes that Doridon, over- 
hearing the love-colloquy of Remond and Fida, can 
find no other trope to describe their felicity than one 
drawn from Ovid, and from the so-called Beaumont 
poem of 1602, Salmacis and Hermaphroditiis, — 

Sweet death they needs must have, who so unite 
That two distinct make one Hermaphrodite.^ 

Lured by such scents as these, our beast of prey may 
pounce — upon a shadow, or not ? — when, having 
tracked the meandering Browne to the second song 
of the Second Book, he there hears him rehearse the 
names of 

What shepheards on the sea were seene 
To entertaine the Ocean's queene, — 

the poets of England: Astrophel (Sidney), ''the 
learned Shepheard of faire Hitching hill " (Chapman), 
all loved Draiton, Jonson, well-languag'd Daniel, 
Christopher Brooke, Davies of Hereford, and Wither, 

Many a skilfull swaine 
Whose equals Earth cannot produce againe, 
But leave the times and men that shall succeed them 
Enough to praise that age which so did breed them, — 

and then, without interim, proceed : 
'^Ihid., I, 3, 297-8. 



• " REMOND " AND " DORIDON " ? 143 

Two of the quaintest swains that yet have beene 
Failed their attendance on the Ocean's queene, 
Remond and Doridon, whose haplesse fates 
Late sever'd them from their more happy mates> 

Browne, who had dropped these companion shepherds 
of the '' pastoral and the rural song " three songs back, 
now needs them to scour the forests for the vanished 
Fida of his fiction. If he had not needed them for 
the narrative here resumed, might they not have at- 
tended the Ocean's queen with the other poets of Eng- 
land, — all, but Sidney, his personal friends, — as 
Fletcher and Beaumont ? This is precisely the way in 
which Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, and Rafael introduced 
into their frescoes the Tornabuoni and Medici of their 
time. We may leave the inquisitive to follow them 
to that realm where, forsaking mythical and pastoral 
romance, 

Many weary dayes 
They now had spent in unfrequented wayes. 
About the rivers, vallies, holts, and crags, 
Among the ozyers and the waving flags, 
They merely pry, if any dens there be, 
Where from the Sun might harbour crueltie: 
Or if they could the bones of any spy. 
Or torne by beasts, or humane tyranny. 
They close inquiry made in caverns blind. 
Yet what they look for would be death to find. 
Right as a curious man that would descry. 
Led by the trembling hand of Jealousy, 
if his fair wife have wrong'd his bed or no, 
Meeteth his torment if he find her so.- 

1 Ibid., II, 2, 247-352. 2 jijij^ 11^ 2, 510-512. 



144 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

I cannot, however, refrain from pointing the ven- 
turesome researcher, — with irony — may be not 
MephistopheHan, but merely pyrrhonic, — to the dra- 
matic misfortunes of Bellario, Aspasia, and Evadne, 
and other heroines of the dramatized romances in 
which Beaumont and Fletcher's theatre of the Globe 
was indulging at the time. And I would ask him 
after he has read the sage advice of Remond to the 
disconsolate shepherd, some two hundred lines further 
down, to turn to Fletcher's poem of 1613 Upon an 
Honest Man's Fortune, and decide whether the poet- 
philosopher of the one is not very much of the same 
opinion as the shepherd-philosopher of the other/ 

1 Cf. especially Brit. Past., II, 2, 706-732, with Fletcher's de- 
fiance of poverty and independence of criticism in his poem, 
Upon cm Honest Man's Fortune, 



CHAPTER X 

AN INTERSECTING CIRCLE OF JOVIAL SORT 

CHRISTOPHER BROOKE of Lincoln's Inn en- 
ters the circle of Beaumont's associates not only 
as the advocate to whom Beaumont's friends in Shake- 
speare's company of actors turn for counsel in an im- 
portant suit at law, and as the encomiast of Shake- 
speare himself a year or two later : 

He that from Helicon sends many a rill, 

Whose nectared veines are drunk by thirsty men,^ 

but as one of the pastoralists of the Inns of Court. 
He was also a friend of Beaumont's older associates, 
Jonson, Drayton, and Davies of Hereford. From an 
unexpected quarter comes information of Brooke's in- 
timacy with still others who at various points im- 
pinged upon Beaumont's career, — with Inigo Jones, 
for instance, who designed the machinery for Beau- 
mont's Masque, and with Sir Henry Nevill, the father 
of the Sir Henry who, a few years later, supplied the 
publisher Walkley with the manuscript of Beaumont 
and Fletcher's A King and No King. When we let 
ourselves in upon the elder Sir Henry carousing at 
the Mitre with Brooke and Jones, and others known 
to Beaumont as members of the Mermaid, in a famous 
symposium held some time between 1608 and Sep- 
tember 161 1, we begin to feel that it was not by mere 

1 The Ghost of Richard III, I, viii (1614). 

145 



146 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

accident that the manuscript oi A King and No King 
fell into the hands of the Nevill family. Sir Henry 
the elder, of Billingbear, Berkshire, was a relative of 
Sir Francis Bacon, and a friend of Davies of Hereford, 
and of Ben Jonson, who dedicated to Nevill about 
1611 one of his most graceful epigrams; probably, 
also, of Francis Beaumont's brother John, who wrote 
a graceful tribute to the memory of one of the gen- 
tlewomen of the family, Mistress Elizabeth Nevill. 
This Sir Henry was an influential member of Parlia- 
ment, a statesman, a courtier, and a diplomat, as well 
as a patron of poets. He came near being Secretary 
of the realm. It is his name that we find scribbled 
with those of Bacon and Shakespeare, about 1597, 
possibly by Davies of Hereford, the admirer of all 
three, over the cover of the Northumbrian Manuscript 
of " Mr. Ffrauncis Bacon's " essays and speeches. 
Sir Henry did not die till 161 5, and it is more than 
likely that the play, A King and No King, which 
was acted about 161 1, and of which his family held 
the manuscript, had his " approbation and patronage " 
as well as that of Sir Henry the younger " to the 
commendation of the authors " ; and that both father 
and son knew Beaumont and Fletcher well. 

The Mitre Inn, a common resort of hilarious Tem- 
plars, still stands at the top of Mitre Court, a few yards 
back from the thoroughfare of Fleet Street. 

The symposium to which I have referred is cele- 
brated in a copy of macaronic Latin verses, entitled 
Mr. Hoskins, his Convivium Philosophicum ; ^ and I 

iln Cal. State Papers (Dom.), under Sept. 2, 1611, I find 
"Description by Ralph Colphab [Thomas Cariat] of Brasenose 
College, Oxford, of a philosophical feast the guests at which 




FRANCIS BACOX 

From the portrait by Paul Van Somer in the National Portrait Gallery, London 



AN INTERSECTING CIRCLE 147 

may be pardoned if I quote from the contemporary 
translation by John Reynolds of New College, the 
opening stanzas, since one is set to wondering how 
many other of the jolly souls " convented," beside 
Brooke and Jones and Nevill, our Beaumont knew. — 

Whosoever is contented 
That a number be convented, 

Enough but not too many; 
The Miter is the place decreed, 
For witty jests and cleanly feed. 

The betterest of any. 

There will come, though scarcely current, 
Christopherus surnamed Torrent 

And John ycleped Made; 
And Arthur Meadow-pigmies' -foe 
To sup, his dinner will forgoe — 

Will come as soon as bade. 

Sir Robert Horse-lover the while, 
Ne let Sir Henry count it vile 

Will come with gentle speed ; 
And Rahhit-tree-where-acorn- grows 
And John surnamed Little-hose 

Will come if there be need. 

And Richard Pewter-Waster best 
And Henry Twelve-month-good at least 
And John Hesperian true. 

were Chris Brook, John Donne," and others in exactly the order 
given below, save for one error. " In Latin Rhymes." Dr. A. 
Clark in his Aubrey's Brief Lives, II, 50-51, gives the Latin 
verses from an old commonplace book in Lincoln College 
Library, " authore Rodolpho Calsabro, Aeneacense " ; but prefers 
the attribution of another old copy, owned by Mr. Madan of 
Brasenose, " per Johannem Hoskyns, London." The translation 
by Reynolds, who died in 1614, is also given by Dr. Clark. 



148 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

If any be desiderated 
He shall be amerciated 
Forty-pence in issue. 

Hugh the Inferior-Germayne, 
Nor yet unlearned nor prophane 

Inego lonicke-pillar. 
But yet the number is not righted: 
If Coriate bee not invited, 

The jeast will want a tiller. 

In his edition of Aubrey's Brief Lives, Dr. Clark 
supplies the glossary to these punning names. Tor- 
rent is, of course, Brooke. Johannes Factus, or 
Made, is Brooke's chamber- fellow of Lincoln's Inn, 
John Donne; and Donne is the great friend and cor- 
respondent in well known epistles of Henry Twelve- 
month-good, the Sir Henry Goodere, or Goodeere, 
who married Frances (Drayton's Panape), one of the 
daughters of " the first cherisher of Drayton's muse." 
Ne-let Sir Henry count it vile is the elder Nevill under 
cover of his family motto, Ne vile velis. Inigo Jones, 
lonicke-pillar is even more thinly disguised in the 
Latin original as Ignatius architectus. Hugh Hol- 
land (the Inferior-Germayne) was of Beaumont's 
Mermaid Club, the writer — beside other poems — of 
commendatory verses for Jonson's Sejamis in 1605, 
and of the sonnet Upon the Lines and Life of that other 
frequenter of the Mermaid, '' sweet Master Shake- 
speare." Holland's '' great patronesse," by the way, 
was the wife of Sir Edward Coke of Beaumont's 
Inner Temple, whose daughter married Beaumont's 
kinsman, Sir John Villiers; and it was by the great 
Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, that Holland was in- 



AN INTERSECTING CIRCLE 149 

troduced to King James. Also, of the Mermaid in 
Beaumont's time was Tom Coryate, the " legge- 
stretcher of Odcombe " without whose presence this 
Convivium Philosophicum would " want its tiller." 
Of the Mermaid, too, was Richard Martin (the 
Pewter-waster). He was fond of the drama; had 
organized a masque at the Middle Temple at the 
time of the Princess Elizabeth's marriage; and it is 
to him that Ben Jonson dedicates the folio of The 
Poetaster (1616). In 161 8, as Recorder of London, 
he was the bosom friend of Brooke, Holland, and 
Hoskins : he died of just such a " symposiaque " as 
this, a few years later, and he lies in the Middle Tem- 
ple. Last, comes the reputed author of these maca- 
ronic Latin verses of the Mitre, John Hoskins himself 
(surnamed Little-hose). He had been a freshman of 
the Middle Temple in the year when Beaumont was 
beginning at the Inner. He was an incomparable 
writer of drolleries, over which we may be sure that 
Beaumont many a time held his sides, — a wag whose 
" excellent witt gave him letters of commendacion to all 
ingeniose persons," a great friend of Beaumont's Jon- 
son, and of Raleigh, Donne, Selden, Camden, and Daniel. 
Of the participants in Serjeant Hoskins's Conviv- 
ium Philosophicum, we find, then, that several were of 
those who came into personal contact with Beaumont, 
and that of the rest, nearly all moved in the field of 
his acquaintance. Concerning a few, Arthur Meadow- 
pigmies'-foe (Cranefield), Sir Robert Horse-lover 
(Phillips), Rabbit-tree-where-acorn-grows (Conyoke 
or Connock), and John Hesperian (West), I have no 
information pertinent to the subject. 



CHAPTER XI 

BEAUMONT AND SIR PHILIP SIDNEy's DAUGHTER; RE- 
LATIONS WITH OTHER PERSONS OF NOTE 

GLIMPSES of the more personal relations of 
Beaumont with the world of rank and fashion, 
and to some extent of his character, are vouchsafed 
us in the few non-dramatic verses that may with cer- 
tainty be ascribed to him. Unfortunately for our pur- 
pose, most of those included in the Poems, *' by Fran- 
cis Beaumont, Gent.," issued by Blaiklock in 1640 
and printed again in 1653, and among The Golden 
Remains '' of those so much admired Dramatick Poets, 
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gents.," in 
1660, are, as I have already said, by other hands than 
his: some of them by his brother, Sir John, and by 
Donne, Jonson, Randolph, Shirley, and Waller. Of 
the juvenile amatory lyrics, addresses, and so-called 
sonnets in these collections, it is not likely that a single 
one is by him; for in an epistle to Sidney's daughter, 
the Countess of Rutland, written when he was evi- 
dently of mature years and reputation, — let us sup- 
pose, about 161 1, Beaumont says: 

I would avoid the common beaten ways 
To women used, which are love or praise. 
As for the first, the little wit I have 
Is not yet grown so near unto the grave 
But that I can, by that dim fading light. 
Perceive of what or unto whom I write. 
150 



AND THE COUNTESS OF RUTLAND 151 

Let others, " well resolved to end their days With a 
loud laughter blown beyond the seas," — let such 

Write love to you: I would not willingly 

Be pointed at in every company. 

As was that little tailor, who till death 

Was hot in love with Queen Elizabeth. 

And for the last, in all my idle days 

I never yet did living woman praise 

In prose or verse. 

A sufficient disavowal, this, of the foolish love songs 
attributed to him by an uncritical posterity. 

As for this " strange letter," as he denominates it, 
from which I have quoted, the sincere, as well as 
brusque, humour attests more than ordinary acquaint- 
ance with, and genuine admiration of, Elizabeth, the 
poetic and only child of Sir Philip Sidney. The Count- 
ess lived but twenty-five miles north-west of Charn- 
wood, and in the same country of Leicestershire. One 
can see the towers from the heights above Grace-Dieu. 
The Beaumonts undoubtedly had been at Belvoir, 
time and again. " If I should sing your praises in 
my rhyme," says he to her of the " white soul " and 
''beautiful face," 

I lose my ink, my paper and my time 
And nothing add to your o'erflowing store. 
And tell you nought, but what you knew before. 
Nor do the virtuous-minded (which I swear, 
Madam, I think you are) endure to hear 
Their own perfections into question brought, 
But stop their ears at them; for, if I thought 
You took a pride to have your virtues known, 
(Pardon me, madam) I should think them none, 



152 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Many a writer of the day agreed with Beaumont 
concerning EHzabeth Sidney, — *' every word you speak 
is sweet and mild." She, said Jonson to Drummond 
of Hawthornden, '' was nothing inferior to her father 
in poesie " ; she encouraged it in others. But her hus- 
band, Roger, fifth Earl of Rutland, though a lover of 
plays himself, does not appear to have favoured his 
Countess's patronage of literary men. He burst in 
upon her, one day when Ben Jonson was dining with 
her, and " accused her that she kept table to poets." 
Of her excellence Jonson bears witness in four poems. 
Most pleasantly in that Epistle included in his The 
Forrest, where speaking of his tribute of verse, he 
says: 

With you, I know my off 'ring will find grace: 

For what a sinne 'gainst your great father's spirit. 

Were it to think, that you should not inherit 

His love unto the Muses, when his skill 

Almost you have, or may have, when you will? 

Wherein wise Nature you a dowrie gave. 

Worth an estate treble to that you have. 

Beauty, I know is good, and blood is more; 

Riches thought most: but, Madame, think what store 

The world hath scene, which all these had in trust, 

And now lye lost in their forgotten dust. 

And in an Epigram ^ To the Honour' d Count- 

esse of , evidently sent to her during the absence 

of her husband on the continent, he compliments her 
conduct, — 

Not only shunning by your act, to doe 
Ought that is ill, but the suspition too, — 

1 Underwoods, XLVIII. 



AND THE COUNTESS OF RUTLAND 153 

at a time when others are following vices and false 
pleasures. But " you," he says, 

admit no company but good, 
And when you want those friends, or neare in blood, 
Or your allies, you make your bookes your friends. 
And studie them unto the noblest ends. 
Searching for knowledge, and to keepe your mind 
The same it was inspired, rich, and refin'd. 

Among other admirers of the Countess of Rutland 
was Sir Thomas Overbury, who, according to Ben 
Jonson, was " in love with her." Beaumont would 
have known the brilliant and ill-starred Overbury, of 
Compton Scorpion, who was not only an intimate of 
Jonson's, but a devoted admirer of their mutual 
friend. Sir Henry Nevill of Billingbear. 

And if Beaumont was on terms of affectionate 
familiarity with Sidney's daughter, he could not but 
have known Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pem- 
broke, as well, the idol of William Browne's epitaph, 
and of his old friend Drayton's eulogy, on the " Fair 
Shepherdess," 

To whom all shepherds dedicate their lays, 
And on her altars offer up their bays. 

" In her time Wilton house," says Aubrey, " was 
like a College; there were so many learned and 
ingeniose persons. She was the greatest patronesse of 
witt and learning of any lady in her time." And if 
Beaumont knew the mother, then, also, William 
Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, the son, to whom his 



154 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

master, Jonson, dedicates in 1611, the tragedy of 
Catiline, prefaced, as we have already observed, by 
verses of Beaumont himself. 

Whatever Rutland's objection may have been to his 
Countess's patronage of poets, we may be sure that 
that lady's attitude toward Beaumont and his literary 
friends was seconded by her husband's old friend the 
Earl of Southampton, with whom in earlier days Rut- 
land used to pass away the time " in London merely in 
going to plaies every day." Southampton had re- 
mained a patron of Burbadge, Shakespeare, and the 
like. And when he died in 1624, we find not only 
Beaumont's acquaintance. Chapman, but Beaumont's 
brother, joining in the chorus of panegyric to his mem- 
ory. " I keep that glory last which is the best," writes 
Sir John, 

The love of learning which he oft express'd 
In conversation, and respect to those 
Who had a name in arts, in verse, in prose. 

Since Southampton was " a dear lover and cherisher 
as well of the lovers of poets as of the poets them- 
selves " ^ we may figure not only the two Beaumonts 
but their beloved Countess participating in such discus- 
sion of noble themes, — if not in London, then at 
Belvoir Castle or Titchfield House or Grace-Dieu 
Priory. If at Belvoir, Leland, the traveler, helps us 
to the scene. ♦ The castle, he says " standyth on the 
very knape of an highe hille, stepe up eche way, partely 
by nature, partely by working of mennes handes, as it 
may evidently be perceived. Of the late dayes [1540], 

^ Thomas Nashe, Dedication of The Life of Jack Wilton. 



AND THE COUNTESS OF RUTLAND 155 

the Erie of Rutland hath made it fairer than ever it 
was. It is straunge sighte to se be how many steppes 
of stone the way goith up from the village to the 
castel. In the castel be 2 faire gates, And its dun- 
geon is a fair rounde tour now turnid to pleasure, as a 
place to walk yn, to se at the countery aboute, and 
raylid about the round [waull, and] a garden [plot] in 
the middle." ^ One sees Francis toiling up the '' many 
steps," received by his Countess and the rest, and re- 
joicing with them in the view of the twenty odd family 
estates from the garden on the high tower. 

Returning to Francis Beaumont's epistle to the 
Countess of Rutland, we observe that it concludes with 
a promise: 

But, if your brave thoughts, which I must respect 
Above your glorious titles, shall accept 
These harsh disorder'd lines, I shall ere long 
Dress up your virtues new, in a new song; 
Yet far from all base praise and flattery. 
Although I know what'er my verses be, 
They will like the most servile flattery shew, 
If I write truth, and make the subject you. 

The opportunity for " the new song " came m a man- 
ner unexpected, and, alas, too soon. In August 161 2, 
but a brief month or so after she had been freed by 
her husband's death from the misery of an unhappy 
marriage, she was herself suddenly carried off by 
some mysterious malady. According to a letter of 
Chamberlain to Sir R. Winwood, " Sir Walter Ral- 

1 Itinerary, Ed. L. T. Smith, Vol. I, 97. 



156 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

eigh is slandered to have given her certaine Pills that 
despatch'd her." That, Sir Walter, even with the 
best intent in the world, could not have done in person, 
for he was in the Tower at the time. Perhaps the 
medicine referred to was one of those " excellent re- 
ceipts " for which Raleigh and his half-brother, Adrian 
Gilbert, were famous. The chemist Gilbert was living 
in those days with the Countess of Rutland's aunt, at 
Wilton. 

Three days after the death of the lady whom he 
so revered, Beaumont poured out his grief in verses 
justly praised as 

A Monument that will then lasting be 
When all her Marble is more dust than she. 

That is what John Earle, writing after Beaumont's 
own death, some four years later, says of the Elegy 
on the Death of the Virtuous Lady, Elizabeth, Count- 
ess of Rutland. And so far as the elegy proper is 
concerned, — that is to say, the first half of the poem, 
ere it blazes into scathing indictment of the physicians 
who helped the Countess to her grave, — I fully agree 
with Earle. Here is poetry of the heart, pregnant 
with pathos, not only of the untimely event — she was 
but twenty-seven years old, — but of the unmerited 
misfortune that had darkened the brief chapter of her 
existence: her father's death while she was yet in in- 
fancy, — 

Ere thou knewest the use of tears 
Sorrow laid up against thou cam'st to years; 

sorrow in her wedded life, — 



AND THE COUNTESS OF RUTLAND 157 

As soon as thou couldst apprehend a grief, 
There were enough to meet thee ; and the chief 
Blessing of women, marriage, was to thee 
Nought but a sacrament of misery. 

And then, 

Why didst thou die so soon? Oh, pardon me! 
I know it was the longest Hfe to thee, 
That e'er with modesty was call'd a span. 
Since the Almighty left to strive with man. 

In this threnody of wasted loveliness and innocence, 
we have our most definite revelation of Beaumont's 
personality as a man among men : his tenderness, his 
fervid friendship, his passionate reverence for spot- 
less womanhood and the sacrament of holy marriage 
(Jonson has given us the facts about her loathsome 
husband); his admiration of the chivalric great — as 
of the hero whose life was ventured and generously 
lost at Zutphen '' to save a land," his contempt for 
pedantic stupidity and professional ineptitude, his faith 
in the " everlasting " worth of poetic ideals, his realiza- 
tion of the vanity of human wishes and of the counter- 
balancing dignity, the cleasing poignancy, of human 
sorrow; his reluctant but profound submission to the 
decree of " the wise God of Nature " ; his acceptance 
of the inexplicable irony of life and of the crowning 
mercy : 

I will not hurt the peace which she should have 
By looking longer in her quiet grave, — 

the consummation that all his heroines of tortured 



158 . BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

chastity, the Bellarios, Arethusas, Aspasias, Pantheas, 
Uranias, of his mimic world, devoutly desired. And as 
a revelation of his poetic temper, perhaps all the more 
for its accessory bitterness and rhetorical conceits, this 
elegy is as valuable a piece of documentary evidence 
as exists outside of Beaumont's dramatic productions. 
It displays not a few of the characteristics which dis- 
tinguish him as a dramatist from Fletcher : his prefer- 
ence in the best of their joint-plays for serious poetic 
theme, his realist humour and bold satiric force, his 
quiverful of words and rhythmical sequence, his crea- 
tive imagery, his lines of vivid, final spontaneity, — 

Sorrow can make a verse without a Muse; 

and " Thou art gone," — 

Gone like the day thou diedst upon, and we 
May call that back again as soon as thee. 

In still another way the lines on the death O'f Sid- 
ney's daughter are instructive. Its noble tribute to 
Sidney's Arcadia is payment of a debt manifest in 
more than one of the dramas to which Beaumont had 
contributed. Of Sir Philip, Beaumont here writes: 

He left two children, who for virtue, wit. 
Beauty, were lov'd of all, — thee and his writ: 
Two was too few ; yet death hath from us took 
, Thee, a more faultless issue than his book, 
Which, now the only living thing we have 
From him, we'll see, shall never find a grave 
As thou hast done. Alas, would it might be 
That books their sexes had, as well as we. 
That we might see this married to the worth, 
And many poems like itself bring forth. 



AND THE COUNTESS OF RUTLAND 159 

The Arcadia had already brought forth offspring: in 
prose, Greene's Menaphon and Pandosto, and Lodge's 
Rosalynde; in verse, Day's lie of Guls. It had 
fathered, immediately, the subplot of Shakespeare's 
King Lear, — and, indirectly, portions of the Winter's 
Tale, and As You Like It, and of other Elizabethan 
plays. ^ Within the twelve months immediately pre- 
ceding August 1612, it had inspired also, as we have 
already observed, Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's 
Revenge, the finest scenes in which are Beaumont's 
dramatic adaptation of romantic characters and mo- 
tives furnished by Sir Philip. And from that same 
" faultless issue," the Arcadia, virtue, art, and beauty, 
loved of all, had earlier still been drawn by Beaumont, 
certainly for The Maides Tragedy, and, perhaps, for 
Philaster as well. 

The acquaintance with the Rutland family was con- 
tinued after the death of Francis by his brother 
John, and his sister Elizabeth. The Nymph " of 
beauty most divine . . . whose admired vertues draw 
All harts to love her " in John's poem, The Shepherd- 
ess, is Lady Katharine Manners, daughter of Francis, 
sixth Earl of Rutland, and now the wife of George 
Villiers, Marquis of Buckingham; and the Shepherdess 
herself " who long had kept her flocks On stony Charn- 
wood's dry and barren rocks," the country dame " For 
singing crowned, whence grew a world of fame 
Among the sheep cotes," is Elizabeth Beaumont of 
Grace-Dieu, back on a visit from her Seyliard home 

1 See Greg's Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Drama, and my 
former pupil, H. W. Hill's, Sidney's Arcadia and the Elizabethan 
Drama. 



i6o BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

in Kent. She had wandered into the summer place 
of the Rutlands and Buckinghams near the Grace- 
Dieu priory — " watered with our silver brookes," and 
had been welcomed and had sung for them. And now 
John repays the courtesy with indirect and graceful 
compliment. 

With the Villiers family, as I have earlier intimated, 
the Beaumonts were connected not only by acquaint- 
ance as county gentry but by ties of blood. Sir George 
Villiers, a Leicestershire squire, had married for his 
second wife, about 1589, Maria Beaumont, a relative 
of theirs, who had been brought up by their kinsmen 
of Coleorton Hall to the wxst of them on the other side 
of the ridge. It will be remembered that one of those 
Coleorton Beaumonts, Henry, was an executor of 
Judge Beaumont's will in 1598. The father of the 
Maria, or Mary, Beaumont whom Henry Beaumont 
nurtured as a waiting gentlewoman in his household, 
was his second cousin, Anthony Beaumont of Glenfield 
in Leicestershire. While Maria was living at the Hall, 
the old Knight, Sir George Villiers of Brooksby, re- 
cently widowed, visited his kinswoman, Eleanor Lewis, 
Henry's wife, at Coleorton, " found there," writes a 
contemporary, Arthur Wilson, '' this young gentle- 
woman, allied, and yet a servant of the family," was 
fascinated by her graces and made her Lady Villiers. 
This Sir George Villiers was of an old and distin- 
guished family. Leland mentions it first among the 
ten families of Leicestershire, '' that be there most of 
reputation." ^ And he says " The chief est house of 
the Villars at this time is at Brokesby in Leicestershire, 

1 Itinerary, Vol. I, 21. See also, below, Appendix, Table A. 





p: 


1. 


;« 


5' 


C/J 










3 


^ 


era 




cr 


?c 


-< 


CO 


K 


H 


o 

3 





S- 


C 


o 


?1 






3 


c 










3* 




rt 


cc 


^ 

P 


C 
O 




P^ 


5 




3 


5 


"-^ 


c 


;5 


> 


s. 


§ 










o 


> 


£L 


'^ 


fT 









*< 


*^ 




> 




THE VILLIERS KIN i6i 

lower by four miles than Melton, on the higher ripe 
[bank] of Wreke river. There lie buried in the 
church divers of the Villars. This Villars [of 1540] 
is lord of Hoby hard-by, and of Coneham in Lincoln- 
shire. . . . He is a man of but two hundred marks of 
land by the year." This " Villars " was the father of 
the Sir George who married Maria Beaumont. 
Brooksby, near Melton Mowbray, is only two or three 
hours' drive from Coleorton. 

The children of this marriage, John, George, and 
Christopher, were but a few years younger than the 
young Beaumonts of Grace-Dieu; and there would 
naturally be some coming and going between the Vil- 
liers children of Brooksby and their Beaumont kin 
of Coleorton and Grace-dieu. George, the second son, 
born in 1592, through whom the fortunes of the family 
were achieved, was introduced to King James in Au- 
gust 1 6 14. This youth of twenty-two had all the 
graces of the Beaumont as well as the Villiers blood. 
** He was of singularly prepossessing appearance," says 
Gardiner, " and was endowed not only with personal 
vigour, but with that readiness of speech which James 
delighted in," It was his mother, Maria, now the 
widowed Lady Villiers, who manoeuvred the meeting. 
Her husband's estates had gone to the children of the 
first marriage : George was her favourite son and she 
staked everything upon his success. James took to 
him from the first; the same year he made him cup- 
bearer ; the next. Gentleman of the Bed-chamber, and 
knighted him and gave him a pension. We may im- 
agine that Francis Beaumont and his brother John 
watched the promotion of their kinsman with keen 



i62 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

interest. But his phenomenal career was only then 
beginning. In 1616, a few months after Francis had 
died, Sir George Villiers was elevated to the peerage 
as Viscount Villiers. By 161 7 this devoted '' Steenie " 
of his " dear Dad and Gossop," King James, is Earl 
of Buckingham, and now, — that Somerset has fallen, 
— the most potent force in the kingdom; in 1618 he 
is Marquis, and in 1623, Duke, — and for some years 
past he has been enjoying an income of £15,000 a 
year from the lands and perquisites bestowed upon 
him. Meanwhile his brother, John, has, in 161 7, mar- 
ried a great heiress, the daughter of Sir Edward Coke 
of Beaumont's Inner Temple, and in 1619 has become 
Viscount Purbeck; his mother, the intriguing Maria, 
has been created Countess of Buckingham, in her own 
right; in due time his younger brother, the stupid 
Christopher, is made Earl of Anglesey. And Buck- 
ingham takes thought not for his immediate family 
alone: In 1617 "Villiers' kinsman [Hen] Beaumont 
was to have the Bishopric of Worcester, but failed " ; ^ 
in 1622 his cousin, Sir Thomas Beaumont of Coleor- 
ton, the son of the Sir Henry ^ who cared for ViUiers' 
mother in her indigence, is created Viscount Beaumont 
of Swords ; and in 1626, John Beaumont of Grace-Dieu 
is dubbed knight-baronet. 

In 1620, the Marquis of Buckingham had married 
Katharine Manners, the daughter and sole heiress of 
Francis, Earl of Rutland. It was a love match; and 

1 Cal. State Papers, Domestic, Chamberlain to Carleton, Jan. 
4, 1617. The Villiers descent is given in Collins, Peerage, III, 762. 

2 Sir Henry had petitioned ineffectually for the revival of the 
viscounty at an earlier date. Cal. St. Pa., Dom., Nov. 23, 1606; 
see, also, reference in 1614. See also, below, Appendix, Table A. 



GEORGE, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM 163 

John Beaumont celebrated it with a glowing epithala- 
mium, praying for the speedy birth of a son 

Who may be worthy of his father's stile, 
May answere to our hopes, and strictly may combine 
The happy height of VilHers race with noble Rutland's 
line. 

Soon afterwards and before 1623, John Beaumont's 
Shepherdesses spoken of above, was written. Beside 
the Nymph, the Marchioness of Buckingham, those 
whom the poem describes as living in " our dales," — 
and welcoming Elizabeth Beaumont, — are the father 
of the Marchioness, the Earl of Rutland, " his lady," 
Cicely (Tufton), the stepmother of Katharine Man- 
ners, — and 

Another lady, in whose brest 

True wisdom hath with bounty equal place, 

As modesty with beauty in her face: 

She found me singing Flora's native dowres 

And made me sing before the heavenly pow'rs. 

For which great favour, till my voice be done, 

I sing of her, and her thrice noble son. 

This other lady, so wise, and bounteous to John Beau- 
mont, is the Countess of Buckingham, who when 
John and our Francis were boys, was poor cousin 
Maria of the Coleorton Beaumonts. To the Marquis 
of Buckingham, " her thrice-noble sonne," John writes 
many poetic addresses in later years : of the birth of a 
daughter. Mall, " this sweete armefull " ; of the birth 
and death of his first son; of how in his " greatnesse," 
George Villiers did not forget him : 



i64 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Yon, onely you, have pow'r to make me dwell 
In sight of men, drawne from my silent cell ; 

and of how Villiers had won himi the recognition of 
the King: 

Your favour first th' anointed head inclines 
To heare my rurall songs, and read my lines. 

George Villiers, is " his patron and his friend." In 
writing to the great Marquis and Duke, John Beau- 
ment never recalls the kinship; but in writing to the 
less distinguished brother, the Viscount Purbeck, he 
delicately alludes to it. 

In the fortunes of the Vauxes of Harrowden, the 
Beaumonts would naturally have continued their in- 
terest. Anne, imprisoned after the Gunpowder Plot, 
was released at the end of six months. The family 
persisted in its adherence to the Catholic faith and poli- 
tics. As late as Feb. 26, 16 12, '' Mrs. Vaux, Lord 
(Edward) Vaux's mother, is condemned to perpetual 
imprisonment, for refusing to take the Oath of Allegi- 
ance " ; and we observe that on March 21, of the same 
year, " Lord Vaux is committed to the Fleet " for a 
like refusal.^ Yoimg Lord Vaux got out of the Fleet, 
in time married, and lived till 1661. 

Others of kin or family connection, — and of his own 
age, — with whom Francis would be on terms of social 
intercourse or even intimacy during his prime, were 
his cousin, Robert Pierrepoint, who by 1601 was in 
Parliament as member for Nottingham, and in 161 5 
was High Sheriff of the shire; Henry Hastings, born 

^Calendar of State Papers (Domestic), 1611-1617, under dates. 



OTHERS OF KIN OR ACQUAINTANCE 165 

in 1586, who since 1604 had been fifth Earl of Hunt- 
ingdon, and in May 161 6 was to be of those appointed 
for the trial of the Earl and Countess of Somerset; 
Huntingdon's sister, Catherine (who was wife of 
Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield), and his brother, 
Edward, a captain in the navy, who the year after 
Beaumont's death made the voyage to Guiana under 
Sir Walter Raleigh; Huntingdon's cousin, and also 
Beaumont's kinsman. Sir Henry Hastings, of whom 
we have already heard as one of Father Gerard's con- 
verts (a first cousin of Mrs. Elizabeth Vaux, and hus- 
band of an Elizabeth Beaumont of Coleorton) ; Sir 
William Cavendish, of the Pierrepoint connection, a 
pupil of Hobbes, an intimate friend of James I, and a 
leader in the society of Court, who was knighted in 
1609, and in 16 12 strengthened his position greatly by 
marrying Christiana, daughter of Lord Bruce of Kin- 
loss; and that other young Cavendish, Sir William of 
Welbeck, county Notts., who in 161 1 was on his trav- 
els on the continent under the care of Sir Henry 
Wotton. With at least three of these scions of fam- 
ilies allied to the Beaumonts, Francis had been asso- 
ciated, as I have already pointed out, by contempo- 
raneity at the Inns of Court. 

Neither the epistle to Elizabeth Sidney nor the elegy 
on her death was included by Blaiklock in his foolish 
book of so-called Beaumont poems. From the elegy 
on Lady Markham's death, in 1609, there included, 
we learn little of the poet's self — he had never seen 
the lady's face, and is merely rhetoricizing. From the 
elegy, also included by Blaiklock, " On the Death of 
the Lady Penelope Clifton," on October 26, 1613, al- 



i66 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

most as artificial, v/e learn no more of Beaumont's 
personality, — but we are led to conjecture some social 
acquaintance with the distinguished family of her 
father, Lord Rich, afterwards Earl of Warwick, and 
of her husband. Sir Gervase Clifton, who had been spe- 
cially admitted to the Inner Temple in 1607; and the 
conjecture is confirmed by the perusal of lines " to the 
immortal memory of this fairest and most vertuous 
lady " included in the works of Sir John Beaumont. 
He writes as knowing Lady Penelope intimately, — the 
sound of her voice, the fairness of her face, her high 
perfections, — and as regretting that he had neglected 
to utter his affection in verse " while she had lived " : 

We let our friends pass idly like our time 
Till they be gone, and then we see our crime. 

These poems on Lady Penelope Clifton forge still 
another link between the Beaumonts and the Sidneys, 
for Penelope's mother, the Lady Penelope Devereux, 
daughter of Walter, first Earl of Essex, was Sidney's 
innamorata, the Stella to his Astrophel. 

One may with safety extend the list of Beaumont's 
acquaintances among the gentry and nobility by cred- 
iting him with some of Fletcher's during the years in 
which the poets wert living in close association; not 
only with Fletcher's family connections, the Bakers, 
Lennards, and Sackvilles of Kent, but with those to 
whom Fletcher dedicates, about 1609, the first quarto 
of his Faithfull Shepheardesse: Sir William Skip- 
with, for instance. Sir Walter Aston, and Sir Robert 
Townshend. Of these the first, esteemed for his 
" witty conceits," his '' epigrams and poesies," was 



SOME OF FLETCHER'S FRIENDS 167 

admired and loved not only by Fletcher but by Beau- 
mont's brother as well — to whom we owe an enco- 
mium evidently sincere : 

... A comely body, and a beauteous mind; 

A heart to love, a hand to give inclin'd; 

A house as free and open as the ayre; 

A tongue which joyes in language sweet and faire, . . . 

and more of the kind. Sir William was a not distant 
neighbour of the Beaumonts, and was knighted, as we 
have seen, at the same time and place as Henry of 
Grace-Dieu; one may reasonably infer that his " house 
as free and open as the ayre " at Cotes in Leicester- 
shire harboured Fletcher and the two Beaumonts on 
more than one occasion. Sir Walter Aston of Tixall 
in Staffordshire, the diplomat, of the Inner Temple 
since 1600, had been, since 1603,^ the patron also of 
Francis Beaumont's life-long friend, Drayton. And 
that poet keeps up the intimacy for many years. 
Writing, after 1627 when Sir Walter, now Baron 
Aston of Forfar, was sent on embassy to Spain, he 
says of Lady Aston that " till here again I may her 
see, It will be winter all the year with me.". In 
1609 Sir Walter is a "true lover of learning," in 
whom " as in a centre " Fletcher *' takes rest," and 
whose " goodness to the Muses " is " able to make a 
work heroical." Of Sir Robert Townshend's rela- 
tion to our dramatists we know nothing save that 
Fletcher says : '^ You love above my means to thank 
ye." He came of a family that is still illustrious, and 
for a quarter of a century he sat in Parliament. 
1 Elton, Drayton, p. 28. 



i68 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Fletcher's closest friend, if we except Beaumont, 
seems to have been Charles Cotton of Beresford, Staf- 
fordshire, " a man of considerable fortune and high 
accomplishments," the son of Sir George Cotton of 
Hampshire. He owed his estates in Staffordshire, and 
in Derbyshire as well, to his marriage with the daugh- 
ter of Sir John Stanhope. To him in 1639, as " the 
noble honourer of the dead author's works and mem- 
ory," Richard Brome dedicates the quarto of Fletcher's 
Monsieur Thomas. " Yours," he says, " is the worthy 
opinion you have of the author and his poems ; neither 
can it easily be determined, whether your affection 
to them hath made you, by observing, more able to 
judge of them, than your ability to judge of them 
hath made you to affect them deservedly, not par- 
tially. . . . Your noble self (has) built him a more 
honourable monument in that fair opinion you have 
of him than any inscription subject to the wearing 
of time can be." To this Charles Cotton, his cousin. 
Sir Aston Cockayne, writes a letter in verse after 
the appearance of the first folio of Beaumont and 
Fletcher's plays, 1647, speaking of Fletcher as " your 
friend and old companion " and reproaching him 
for not having taken the pains to set the printers 
right about what in that folio was Fletcher's, what 
Beaumont's, what Massinger's, — " I wish as free you 
had told the printers this as you did me." And it is 
apparently to Cotton that Cockayne is alluding w^hen, 
upbraiding the publishers for not giving each of the 
authors his due, he says, *' But how came I (you 
ask) so much to know? Fletcher's chief bosome- 
friend informed me so." Elsewhere Cockayne de- 



SOME OF FLETCHER'S FRIENDS 169 

scribes Fletcher and Massinger as "great friends"; 
but the "bosome-friend " mentioned above cannot be 
Massinger, for Massinger is one of those concerning 
whose authorship " the bosome-friend " gives infor- 
mation. 

Cotton v^as a friend of Ben Jonson, Donne, and 
Selden, also. To him it is, as a critic, and not to his 
son, who was a poet, that Robert Herrick, born seven 
years after Beaumont, writes: 

For brave comportment, wit without offence, 

Words fully flowing, yet of influence, 

Thou art that man of men, the man alone, 

Worthy the publique admiration: 

Who with thine owne eyes read'st what we doe write, 

And giv'st our numbers euphonic and weight ; 

Tell'st when a verse springs high, how understood 

To be, or not, borne of the royall-blood. 

What state above, what symmetric below, 

Lives have, or sho'd have, thou the best can show. — ^ 

And it is likely that Cotton did the same for Fletcher 
and Beaumont. 

Of Cotton, Fletcher's and, therefore, Beaumont's 
friend, Lord Clarendon gives us explicit information: 
*' He had all those qualities which in youth raise men 
to the reputation of being fine gentlemen : such a 
pleasantness and gaiety of humour, such a sweetness 
and gentleness of nature, and such a civility and de- 
light fulness in conversation, that no man in the Court 
or out of it appeared a more accomplished person ; all 
these extraordinary qualifications being supported by 

^Hesperides, Aldine edition of Herrick, II, 136. 



I70 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

as extraordinary a clearness of courage, and fearless- 
ness of spirit, of which he gave too often manifesta- 
tion." In later life he was less happy in fortune and 
in disposition, " and gave his best friends cause to 
have wished that he had not lived so long." He passed 
through the Civil War and died at the end of Crom- 
well's protectorate, 1658. 

And of Robert Her rick, we may say that he, too, 
was surely an acquaintance of our poets. He writes 
many poems to Ben Jonson. To their other friend, 
Selden, Fletcher's connection by the Baker alliance, 
and Beaumont's associate in the Inner Temple, he 
writes appreciatively : 

Whose smile can make a poet, and your glance 
Dash all bad poems out of countenance.^ 

And of our dramatists themselves, he writes about 
the same time that he is writing to Selden, in his 
verses To the Apparition of his Mistresse, calling him 
to Elisium, — 

Amongst which glories, crown'd with sacred bayes 
And flatt'ring ivie, two recite their plaies — 
Beaumont and Fletcher, swans to whom all eares 
Listen while they, like syrens in their spheres. 
Sing their Evadne.^ 

The Bohemian life on the Bankside, such as it was, 
must have been brought to an end by Beaumont's mar- 
riage, about 1 61 3. By that time Beaumont had writ- 

^ Hesperides, Aldine edition, Herrick, I, 301. 
2 0/>. cit., I, 329. 




JOHN SELDEN 
From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London 



SOME OF FLETCHER'S FRIENDS 171 

ten The Woman-Hater, The Knight of the Burning 
Pestle, The Maske, and several poems; Fletcher, The 
Faithfull Shepheardesse and three or four plays more ; 
the two in partnership, at least five plays ; and Fletcher 
had meanwhile collaborated with other dramatists in 
from eight to eleven plays which do not now concern 
us. As to the remaining dramas assigned to this period 
and attributed by various critics to Beaumont and 
Fletcher in joint-authorship, we shall later inquire. 
Suffice it for the present to say that I do not believe 
that the former had a hand in any of them, except 
The Scornful Ladie, 



CHAPTER XII 
Beaumont's marriage and death; the surviving 

FAMILY 

TN the 1653 edition of the "Poems; By Francis 
-■■ Beaumont, Gent." there, is one, ordinarily re- 
garded as of doubtful authorship, which, in default of 
information to the contrary, I am tempted to accept 
as his and to attach to it importance, as of biographical 
interest. It purports to bear his signature *' Fran. 
Beaumont " ; it bears for me the impress of his literary 
style. Writing before August 161 2, to the Countess 
of Rutland, Beaumont had, as we have remarked, 
disclaimed ever having praised " living woman in 
prose or verse." In The Examination of his Mistris' 
Perfections, the poem of which I speak, the writer 
praises with all sincerity the woman of his love: 

Stand still, my happinesse; and, swelling heart, — 
No more! till I consider what thou art. 

Like our first parents in Paradise who " thought it 
nothing if not understood," so the poet of his happi- 
ness — 

Though by thy bountious favour I be in 
A paradice, where I may freely taste 
Of all the vertuous pleasures which thou hast 
[I] wanting that knowledge, must, in all my blisse, 

172 



HIS MARRIAGE 173 

Erre with my parents, and aske what it is. 

My faith saith 'tis not Heaven; and I dare swear, 
If it be Hell, no pain of sence, is there ; 
Sure, 't is some pleasant place, where I may stay. 
As I to Heaven go in the middle way. 
Wert thou but faire, and no whit vertuous, 
Ihou wert no more to me but a faire house 
Hanted with spirits, from which men do them blesse, 
And no man will halfe furnishe to possesse: 
Or, hadst thou worth wrapt in a rivell'd skin, 
'T were inaccessible. Who durst go in 
To find it out? for sooner would I go 
To find a pearle cover'd with hills of snow; 
'T were buried vertue, and thou mightst me move 
To reverence the tombe, but not to love, — 
No more than dotingly to cast mine eye 
Upon the urne where Lucrece' ashes lye. 

But thou art faire and sweet, and every good 
That ever yet durst mixe with flesh and blood: 
The Devill ne're saw in his fallen state 
An object whereupon to ground his hate 
So fit as thee ; all living things but he 
Love thee; how happy, then, must that man be 
Whom from amongst all creatures thou dost take! 
Is there a hope beyond it? can he make 
A wish to change thee for? This is my blisse, 
Let it run on now; I know what it is. 

The poet of this tribute is not wooing, but worship- 
ing the woman won; reverently striving to compre- 
hend an ineffable joy. The poem is not of praises 
such as Beaumont in his epistle Ad Comitissam Rut- 
lundiae contemns, praises " bestow'd at most need on 
a thirsty soul." The writer, here, purports to ex- 



174 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

amine into his Mistress's perfections, but, like the 
author of the epistle to the Countess, he examines not 
at all, — he observes the reticence for which Beaumont 
there had given the reason, — 

Nor do the virtuous-minded (which I swear 
Madam, I think you are) endure to hear 
Their own perfections into question brought, 
But stop their ears at them. 

When the lines of the Examination are set beside the 
undoubted poems of Beaumont, they appear, in rhet- 
oric, metaphor, and sentiment, to be of a type with 
the two tributes to Lady Rutland; in vocabulary, 
rhyme, and run-on lines, also, to be of one font with 
them, and with the letter to Ben Jonson and the elegy 
to Lady Clifton. When the lines are set beside those 
of Beaumont's own phrasing in the dramas, one finds 
that in their brief compass they echo the metaphor of 
his Amintor, ** my soul grows weary of her house," — 
the hyperbole of his Philaster, " I will sooner trust 
the wind With feathers, or the troubled sea with 
pearl," — the passionate ecstasy of his Arbaces, '' Here 
I acknowledge thee, my hope ... a happinesse as 
high as I could thinke . . . Paradice is there ! " The 
tribute is a variant of those closing lines in A King 
and No King, 

I have a thousand joyes to tell you of, 
Which yet I dare not utter, till I pay 
My thankes to Heaven for um. 

I date this poem, then 1612 or 161 3, a year or two 



URSULA ISLEY 175 

after the play just mentioned and the epistle to Lady- 
Rutland; and I imagine with some confidence that it 
was written by Beaumont for Ursula Isley, whom he 
married about this time. 

Ursula's father, Henry Isley, belonged to a family 
of landed gentry which had been seated since the reign 
of Edward II in the parish of Sundridge, Kent. The 
manor came to them from the de Freminghams in 
141 2. In 1554 Sir Harry Isley and his son, William, 
who were prominent upholders of the reformed re- 
ligion, had joined hands with the gallant young Sir 
Thomas Wyatt of Allington Castle — about seventeen 
miles from Sundridge — in the rebellion which he 
raised in protest against the proposed marriage of 
Queen Mary with Philip of Spain. At Blacksole 
Field, near Wrotham, half-way between Sundridge 
and Allington, the Isley contingent was met and routed 
by Sir Robert Southwell and Lord Abergavenny; and 
the vast Isley estates were confiscated. A considerable 
part was restored to William within a year or two. 
But he falling into debt had to sell the larger portion ; 
and for the manor of Sundridge itself, he appears to 
have paid fee farm rent to the Crown. 

By will, probably September 3, 1599, William's son, 
Henry, left all his '' mannors, lands, tenements, and 
hereditafments, in the countie of Kent or else where 
within the realme of England, unto Jane my lovinge 
wief in fee simple, viz* to her and her heires for ever, 
to the end and purpose that she maye doe sell or 
otherwise dispose at her discretion the same, or such 
parte or soe much thereof as to her shall seeme fitt, 
for the payement of all my just and true debts . . . 



176 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

and also for the bringing up and preferment in mar- 
riage of Ursula and Una, the two daughters or chil- 
dren of her the said Jane, my lovinge wief." That the 
children were not, however, stepdaughters of Henry, 
is pointed out by Dyce, who quotes the manuscript of 
Vincent's Leicester, 1619: "Ursula, the daughter 
and coheir [evidently with Una] of Henry Isley." ^ 
In fact, Henry had named Ursula after his mother, the 
daughter of Nicholas Clifford. 

It will be remembered that Beaumont's sister Eliza- 
beth became the wife of a Thomas Seyliard of Kent. 
The Seyliards were one of the oldest families in the 
vicinity of Sundridge; and Thomas would be of 
Brasted, which adjoins Sundridge westward, a quarter 
of a mile from Sundridge Place and near the river 
Darenth ; or of Delaware at the south of the parish ; or 
of Gabriels about a mile from there and seven miles 
south of Sundridge; or of Chidingstone close by; or 
Boxley.^ If Elizabeth was married before 1613, it 
is easy to surmise that during some visit to her, Beau- 
mont was brought acquainted with Ursula Isley of 
Sundridge Place. If not, we may refer the acquaint- 
ance to sojournings with his friend, Fletcher, at Cran- 
brook or at the Kentish homes of Fletcher's stepsis- 
ters, or with their cousins, the Sackvilles. 

We have no proof that Francis Beaumont wrote 
more than one drama after the Whitehall festivities 
of February 161 3. Two plays in which he is sup- 
posed by some to have had a hand with Fletcher, The 
Captain e and The Honest Man's Fortune, were acted 

1 Works of B. and F., I, H-lii. 

2Hasted's History of Kent (1797), II, 433; HI, 146, 154, 186. 



SUNDRIDGE PLACE 177 

during that year; but I find no trace of Francis in the 
latter and but slight possibility of it in the former. 
We must conclude that from 161 3 he lived as a coun- 
try gentleman. He would be much more likely to 
take up his abode at Sundridge, which, as we have seen, 
belonged to his wife and her sister, than at Grace- 
Dieu Manor; for that was occupied by John Beau- 
mont who had four sons to provide for. It is, of 
course, barely possible that one of his father's proper- 
ties in Leicestershire or Derby may have fallen to 
him, — Cottons, for instance, in the latter county, or 
that " Mannor House of Normanton, and a close ther 
called the Parke " mentioned in the Judge's will and 
in which house-room was given by him to a " serv- 
aunte . . . for the tearme of eleaven yeares " begin- 
ning 1598. But the probabilities all point to the 
manor house in Kent as the scene of Beaumont's clos- 
ing years. ^ 

Sundridge Place lies, as we know, just south of 
Chevening and west of Sevenoaks. The old manor 
house in which, we may presume, Beaumont and Ur- 
sula lived, and where his children were born, has long 
since disappeared. But the old church, just north 
of the Place, with its Early English and Perpendicular 
architecture still stands much as in their day. The 
old brass tablets to the Isleys of two centuries are 
there, and the altar-tomb of the John Isley and his 
wife who died a century before Beaumont was born. 
Near this memorial we may imagine that Beaumont 

1 For Sundridge and the Isleys, see Hasted's Kent, II, 513-521 ; 
III, 12&-132, 143-145; and Cal, S. P. (Dom.) Jan. 23, Feb. 24, 
1554. 



178 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

and Ursula sat of a Sunday; and through this same 
picturesque graveyard, breathing peace, they would 
pass home again. Some days they would take the 
half -hour stroll across the forks of the Darenth, by 
Combebank in the chalk hills and through the woods, 
to Chevening House, and drink a cup with old Samp- 
son Lennard and his son, Sir Henry, and Fletcher's 
stepsister Chrysogona (Grisogone), now Lord and 
Lady Dacre, and make merry with their seven young- 
sters ; ' and, coming back by the Pilgrim's road that 
makes for the shrine of the " holy blissful martir," 
Beaumont would quote, from Speght's edition of 
Chaucer which had appeared but thirteen years before, 
something merry of the 

Well nyne and twenty in a companye. 
Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle 
In felawshipe, and pilgrims were they alle, 
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde. 

Or sometimes they would tramp across to Squerries 
and fish in the Darenth for the bream of which Spen- 
ser had written ; perhaps, visit their sister Seyliard that 
same evening. 

Another summer day, Francis would ride the ten 
miles north toward Chislehurst (ashes of Napoleon 
le petit!), and turn aside to pay his compliments to the 
proprietor of Camden Place, Ben Jonson's friend the 
antiquary. But we may suppose that more gladly and 
frequently than to any other spot, this dramatist- 
turned-squire, and settled down for health and leisure, 
would head his horse for Knole; and, galloping the 
hills through Chipstead and Sevenoaks up to the old 



SUNDRIDGE PLACE 179 

church that crowns the height, would steady to a trot 
along the stately avenue of the Park amid its beeches 
and sycamores, — resting his eye on broad sweeps of 
pasture-land and distant groves, and thinking poetry, 
— to be greeted within one short half -hour from the 
time he left the Place, by that most hospitable noble- 
man of the day, the noblest patron of poetry and art, 
Richard Sackville, third Earl of Dorset. They would 
pace — ^ these two lovers of Ben Jonson, and wor- 
shippers of the first dramatist-earl — the Great Hall, 
together, talking of plays, of the burning of the Globe 
while Henry VIII was on the boards, or of the opening 
of the new Blackfriars, or of Overbury's poisoning, 
and the scandalous marriage of Rochester and Lady 
Essex, or of Sir Henry Nevill's chances in the matter 
of the Secretaryship, or of Win wood's appointment, or 
of Raleigh's grievances, or of the new favourite, young 
Villiers of Brooksby, or of the long existing grievance 
of Beaumont's Catholic cousins, in and after 1614 all 
the more acute because of the hopes and fears throng- 
ing that other subject of discussion which doubtless 
would occupy a place in any conversation, the negotia- 
tions of Don Diego Sarmiento for a Spanish Marriage. 
Perhaps they would stretch their legs out to the fire 
before the old andirons that had once been Henry 
Vni's, and talk of the tragic romance of young Wil- 
liam Seymour and Lady Arabella Stuart, the cousin 
alike of Robert Pierrepoint and his majesty, James I; 
or of the indictment and fall of Somerset. Or they 
would stroll to the chapel, and decipher the carvings 
of the Crucifixion which Mary, Queen of Scots, had 
given to the Earl's brother, now dead. Or the Earl 



i8o BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

would point out some new portrait of that wonderful 
collection, then forming, of literary men in the din- 
ing-room, and Beaumont would pass judgment upon 
the presentment of some of his own contempora- 
ries. 

Then down the drive by which the sheep are brows- 
ing and the deer, like Agag delicately picking their 
way, and back to Sundridge of the Isleys, and to 
Ursula; maybe to an afternoon of lazy writing on 
scenes that Fletcher has called for — perhaps the 
posset-night of Sir Roger and Abigail for the begin- 
ning of The Scornful Ladie. 

In 1614 or 1615, the poet's first child, a 
daughter, was born and was appropriately named 
after the two Elizabeths who had touched most closely 
upon his life. But the days of wedded happiness — 
" This is my blisse. Let it run on now ! " — were brief. 
On March 6, 1616, he died, — only thirty-one years 
of age.^ 

The lines written to Lady Rutland, some five years 
before, 

What little wit I have 
Is not yet grown so near unto the grave. 
But that I can, by that dim fading light. 
Perceive of what, or unto whom I write, 

may have been conceived merely in humorous self- 
depreciation. But when we couple them with the 
epitaph written by John of Grace-Dieu " upon my 
deare brother, Francis Beaumont," — 

1 Jonson's statement to Drummond " ere he was thirty years of 
age" is incorrect, or was misreported. 



HIS DEATH i8i 

On Death, thy murd'rer, this revenge I take: 
I sHght his terrour, and just question make, 
Which of us two the best precedence have — 
Mine to this wretched world, thine to the grave. 
. hou shouldst have followed me, but Death to blame 
Miscounted yeeres, and measur'd age by fame: 
So dearely hast thou bought thy precious lines; 
Their praise grew swiftly, so thy life declines. 
Thy Muse, the hearer's queene, the reader's love, 
All eares, all hearts (but Death's), could please and 
move ; — 

v^hen v^e couple the dramatist's own words of his 
" wit not yet grown so near unto the grave " with 
these of his brother which I have italicized, and re- 
flect that for the last three years Francis seems to 
have written almost nothing, we are moved to con- 
jecture that his early death was not unconnected with 
an excessive devotion to his art, and that his health 
had been for some time failing. As Darley long ago 
pointed out,^ the lines of Bishop Corbet *' on Mr. 
Francis Beaumont (then newly dead) " may intend 
more than a poetical conceit; and they would confirm 
the probability suggested above. 

He that hath such acuteness and such wit. 
As would ask ten good heads to husband it; 
He that can write so well, that no man dare 
Refuse it for the best, let him beware: 
Beaumont is dead ; by whose sole death appears, 
Wit's a disease consumes men in few years. — 

And this conjecture is borne out by the portrait of 
the weary Beaumont that now hangs in Nuneham. 
1 Introduction to The Works of B. and F., ed. 1866, I, xviii. 



i82 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Three days after his death the dramatist was buried 
in that part of Westminster Abbey which, since Spen- 
ser was laid there to the left of Chaucer's empty 
grave, had come to be regarded as the Poets' Corner. 
Beaumont lies to the right of Chaucer's gray marble 
on the east side of the South Transept in front of 
St Benedict's chapel. In what honour he was held 
we gather from the consideration that, of poets, only 
Chaucer and Spenser had preceded him to a resting 
place in the Abbey ; and that of his contemporaries, 
only four writers of verse followed him : his brother. 
Sir John, who died some eleven years later, and lies 
beside him; his old friend, Michael Drayton, in 1631 ; 
Hugh Holland, in 1633; and that friend of all four, 
Ben Jonson, in 1637. On the " learned " or " histor- 
ical " side of the transept, across the way from the 
poets, lie also only three of Beaumont's genera- 
tion: Casaubon the philologist, Hakluyt the voyager, 
and Ben Jonson's master and benefactor — '' most 
reverend head, to whom I owe All that I am in acts, 
all that I know," — Camden the antiquary. " In the 
poetical quarter," writes Addison, a hundred years 
later, ** I found there were poets who had no monu- 
ments, and monuments which had no poets." Of 
the former category is Beaumont; of the latter, the 
alabaster bust of Drayton whose body lies under the 
north wall of the nave, and the monument to Jonson, 
who, having no one rich enough to " lay out funeral 
charges upon him," stands, in accordance with his 
own desire, on his '' eighteen inches of square ground " 
under a paving-stone in the north aisle of the nave, — 
and the figure of their associate, Shakespeare, who, 



HIS DEATH 183 

though there was much talk of transporting his body 
from Stratford in the year of his death and Beau- 
mont's, did not, even in " preposterous " effigy, join 
his compeers of the Poets' Corner till more than a 
century had elapsed. Upon Beaumont's grave Dry- 
den's lofty pile encroaches. Above the grave rises 
the bust of Longfellow; and not far from Beaumont, 
Tennyson and Browning were lately laid to rest. 

The verses. On the Tombs in Westminster^ attrib- 
uted to our poet-dramatist, are of doubtful author- 
ship, but in diction and turn of thought they are 
paralleled by more than one of the poems which we 
have found to be his : — 

Mortality, behold, and feare. 

What a change of flesh is here! 

Thinke how many royall bones 

Sleep within these heap of stones: 

Here they lye, had realmes and lands. 

Who now want strength to stir their hands; 

Where from their pulpits, seal'd with dust, 

They preach " In greatnesse is not trust." 

Here 's an acre sown, indeed, 

With the richest, royall'st seed 

That the earth did e're suck in 

Since the first man dy'd for sin: 

Here the bones of birth have cry'd, 

" Though gods they were, as men they dy*d " ; 

Here are sands, ignoble things, 

Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings. 

Here' s a world of pomp and state 

Buried in dust, once dead by fate. 

If the lines are not by Francis, they still preach the 



1 84 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

calm, deterministic spirit of his poems and his trag- 
edies; and they are worthy of him. 

Beaumont's surviving brother of Grace-Dieu con- 
tinued for many years to write epistolary, panegyric, 
and religious poems, which won increasing favour 
among scholars and at Court. They were collected 
and published by his son, in 1629. Of his Battle of 
Boszuorth Field, which contains some genuinely poetic 
passages, I have already spoken. In his lines to 
James I Concerning the True Forme of English Po- 
etry, composed probably the year of Francis' death, 
or the year after, he desiderates regularity of rhyme, 

Pure phrase, fit epithets, a sober care 

Of metaphors, descriptions cleare, yet rare, 

Similitudes contracted, smooth and round, 

Not vex't by learning, but with nature crown'd, — 

strong and unaffected language, and noble subject. 
They made an impression upon his contemporaries in 
verse; and, though he was but a minor poet, he has 
come to be recognized as one of the '' first refiners " 
of the rhyming couplet, — a forerunner, in the limpid 
style, of Waller, Denham, and Cowley. His transla- 
tions from Horace, Juvenal, Persius, and* Prudentius 
are done with spirit. His later poems set him before 
us an eminently pious soul, kindly, courtly, and culti- 
vated. His greatest work, the Crozvne of Thornes, 
in eight books, is lost. It was evidently dedicated to 
Shakespeare's Earl of Southampton, for in his elegy 
on the Earl, 1624, he says: 

Shall ever I forget with what delight 
He on my simple lines would cast his sight? 



THE SURVIVING FAMILY 185 

His onely mem'ry my poore worke adornes, 
He is a father to my crowne of thornes : 
Now since his death how can I ever looke 
Without some tears, upon that orphan booke? 

That this poem was printed we gather also from the 
elegy of Thomas Hawkins upon Sir John. 

I have already said that John was raised by Charles 
I, undoubtedly through the influence of the Duke of 
Buckingham, to the baronetcy in 1626. He died only 
a year or two later,^ and was lamented in verse by his 
sons, and by poets and scholars of the day. On the 
appearance of his poetical remains, Jonson wrote 
" This booke will live ; it hath a genius," and " I con- 
fesse a Beaumont's booke to be The bound and fron- 
tire of our poetrie." And Drayton — 

There is no splendour, which our pens can give 
By our most labour'd lines, can make thee live 
Like to thine owne. 

In the commendatory poems, his friend, Thomas 
Nevill,^ praises his goodness, his knowledge and his 
art. Sir Thomas Hawkins of Nash Court, Kent, — 
connected through Hugh Holland and Edmund Bol- 
ton with the circle of Sir John's acquaintances, — 
emphasizes the modesty, regularity, moral and relig- 
ious devotion no less of his life than of his poetry. 
His sons rejoice that " His draughts no sensuall 

1 According to the Register of burials in Westminster Abbey, 
1627; but some authorities say 1628. See Dyce, I, xxi ; Chal- 
mer's English Poets, VI, 3, and Grosart's edition of his poems. 

2 This is certainly not the Master of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, as Grosart opines, — for the simple reason that the Mas- 
ter died thirteen years before Sir John. 



i86 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

waters ever stain'd." His brother-in-law, George 
Fortescue of Leicestershire, and others swell the 
chorus of affection. He was, says the historian of 
Leicestershire who knew him well, — William Burton, 
the brother of that rector of Segrave, near by, who 
wrote the Anatomy of Melancholy, — he was " a gen- 
tleman of great learning, gravity, and worthiness." 

Sir John was succeeded at Grace-Dieu by John, his 
oldest son, who fought during the Civil War for King 
Charles, and fell at the siege of Gloucester, in 1644. 
Other sons were Gervase, who died in childhood, 
Francis, who became a Jesuit, and Thomas, who suc- 
ceeded in 1644 to the family title and estates. The 
Manor of Grace-Dieu passed finally to the Philips fam- 
ily of Garendon Park, about four miles from Grace- 
Dieu and half a mile from old Judge Beaumont's 
property of Sheepshead. The founder of this family 
at Garendon in 1682 was Sir Ambrose Philips,^ the 
father of the Ambrose who wrote the Pastorals and 
The Distrest Mother. From the Philipses the present 
owners of Garendon and Grace-Dieu, the Phillipps de 
Lisles, inherited. The old house is no longer stand- 
ing. But below the new Manor may be seen the ruins 
of the Nunnery from which the Master of the Rolls 
almost four centuries ago evicted Catherine Ekesil- 
dena and her sister-nuns. It is interesting to note 
that the name de Lisle, or Lisle, is but a variant of that 
of Francis Beaumont's wife Isley (de Insula) ; and 
that the present family came from the Isle of Wight 
and Kent, Ursula Isley's native county. I have not, 
however, yet been able to establish any direct con- 

1 Nichols, Coll. Hist., Leic.,-Bihl. Top. Britt., VIII, 1329, 1341. 



THE SURVIVING FAMILY 187 

nection between the Sundridge Isleys and the Phil- 
Hpps de Lisles who came into the Grace-Dieu estates 
in 1777. 

The sister of the Beaumonts, Elizabeth, was about 
twenty-four years old at the time of Francis' marriage 
to Ursula Isley of Kent. The date of her wedding 
to Thomas Seyliard does not appear; but before 1619 
she was settled in the same county, and within a few 
miles of Chevening, Sundridge, and Knole. Of the 
events of her subsequent life we know nothing. That 
she cultivated poetry and the poets, however, may be 
inferred, from various passages in Drayton's Muses 
Elisium. In the third, fourth, and eighth Nimphalls, 
written as late as 1630, the old poet introduces among 
his nymphs, — singing in the *' Poets Paradice," which, 
I surmise, was terrestrially Knole Park, — the same 
" Mirtilla " who in his eighth Eglog of 1606 was '* sis- 
ter to those hopeful boys, . . . Thyrsis and sweet 
Palmeo." Only a year before the appearance of these 
Nimphalls Drayton composed for the publication of 
her elder brother's poems, a lament " To the deare 
Remembrance of his Noble Friend, Sir John Beau- 
mont, Baronet." Mirtilla had outlived both Thyrsis 
and Palmeo, but not the affection of their life-long ad- 
mirer and boon companion. 

The widow of the dramatist bore a child a few 
months after the father's death, and named her 
Frances. In 1619 Ursula administered her husband's 
estate ; ^ and she probably continued to live with her 
children at the family seat in Sundridge. The elder 
daughter, Elizabeth, was married to " a Scotch colo- 

lA. B. Grosart, in D.N.B., art. Francis Beaumont. 



i88 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

nel " and was living in Scotland as late as 1682. 
Frances was never married. She seems to have cher- 
ished her father's fame as her richest possession. It 
was, indeed, probably her only possession, save a 
packet of his poems in manuscript which, we are told, 
she carried with her to Ireland, but unfortunately 
'' they were lost at sea " ^ on her return. In 1682 
she was " resident in the family of the Duke of 
Ormonde," then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.^ She 
appears to have attended the high-spirited and capable 
Duchess, or other ladies of the Butler family, at the 
Castle in Dublin, or the family seat in Kilkenny, as 
companion. Under the protection of that loyal cav- 
alier and Christian statesman, James, Duke of Or- 
monde, whose prayer was ever *' for the relieving and 
delivering the poor, the innocent, and the oppressed," ^ 
she must have known happiness, for at any rate a 
few years. She was retired by the Duke, apparently 
after the death of the Duchess, in 1684, on a pension 
of one hundred pounds a year; and this competence we 
learn that she still enjoyed in 1700, when at the age of 
eighty- four she was living in Leicestershire, — let us 
hope in her father's old home of Grace-Dieu. She 
may have survived to see the accession of Queen Anne. 
We know merely that she died before 171 1. Her life 
bridges the space from the day of her father, Shake- 
speare's younger contemporary, to that of her father's 
encomiast, Dryden, and further still to that of Con- 
greve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, and Addison ; and we are 

1 Preface to B. and F's Works, ed. 171 1, p. i. 
2Dyce, Vol. I, p. 211, from MS., Vincent's Leicester, 1683. 
3 James Wills, Lives of Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen, 
1841, Vol. Ill, Pt. ii, p. 244. 



THE SURVIVING FAMILY 189 

thus helped to realize that in the arithmetic of genera- 
tions Beaumont's times and thought are after all not 
so far removed from our own. Two more such spans 
of human existence would link his day with that of 
Tennyson, Browning, and Swinburne. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE PERSONALITY, AND THE CONTEMPORARY REPU- 
TATION OF BEAUMONT 

OUR poet's contemporaries saw him, not as one of 
my scholarly friends. Professor Herford, judg- 
ing apparently from the crude engraving of 1711,^ 
or from that of 1812, sees him, "of heavy and unin- 
teresting features," but as Swinburne saw him, prob- 
ably in Robinson's engraving of 1840, " handsome 
and significant in feature and expression alike . . . 
with clear thoughtful eyes, full arched brows, and 
strong aquiline nose with a little cleft at the tip; a 
grave and beautiful mouth, with full and finely- 
curved lips; the form of face a long pure oval, and 
the imperial head, with its * fair large front ' and 
clustering hair, set firm and carried high with an 
aspect at once of quiet command and kingly observa- 
tion " ; 2 as we see him to-day in the soft and speaking 
photogravure^ recently made from the portrait at 
Knole Park or in the reproduction of 191 1 ^ of the 
portrait which belongs to the Rt. Hon. Lewis Har- 
court at Nuneham, — a courtly gentleman of noble 

1 From the portrait at Knole Park. 
^Encyc. Brit., sub nomine. 

3 By Cockerell, in the Variorum Edition of B. and F.'s Works, 
Vol. I, 1904. See Frontispiece to this volume. 

^Historical Portraits, Vol. II, 1600-1700, Oxford, 191 1. 

190 



PORTRAITS 191 

mien, of countenance dignified, beautiful, and mobile, 
and of dreamy eyes somewhat saddened as by physical 
suffering, or by sympathetic pondering on the mystery 
of life. The original at Knole was already there, 
in the time of Lionel, seventh Earl of Dorset, 171 1, 
and in default of information to the contrary we may 
conclude that it has always been in the possession of 
the Sackville family, and was painted for Beaumont's 
contemporary, and I have ventured to surmise friend 
as well as neighbour, Richard, third Earl of Dorset, — 
who had succeeded to the earldom in 1609 — about the 
year of Philaster. I have already shown that the Sack- 
villes were connected with the Fletchers by marriage. 
They were also patrons of Beaumont's friends, Jon- 
son and Drayton. While the third Earl was still liv- 
ing, poor old Ben writes to son, Edward Sackville, a 
grateful epistle for succouring his necessities. And to 
the same Edward, as fourth Earl,^ Drayton dedicated, 
1630, the Nimphalls of his Muses Elizium, and to his 
Countess, Mary, the Divine Poems, published there- 
with. If, as others have conjectured, the Earl is him- 
self the Dorilus of the Nimphalls, the exquisite De- 
scription of Elimum which precedes, may be, after 
the fashion of the poets and painters of the Renais- 
sance, an idealized picture of Knole Park, where 
Drayton probably had been received : 

A Paradice on earth is found. 

Though farre from vulgar sight, 
Which, with those pleasures doth abound. 

That it Elizium hight, — 

1 Not to the third Earl, Richard, as Cyril Brett, Drayton's 
Minor Poems, p. xix, has it. 



192 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

of its groves of stately trees, its merle and mavis, its 
daisies damasking the green, its spreading vines upon 
the " cleeves," its ripening fruits : 

The Poets Paradice this is, 

To which but few can come; 
The Muses onely bower of blisse, 

Their Deare Elizium. 

It was the widow of the third Earl, Anne (Clifford), 
Countess of Dorset and, afterwards, of Pembroke and 
Montgomery,^ who erected the monument to Drayton 
in the Poets' Corner. That Beaumont was acquainted 
with this family of poets and patrons of art is, there- 
fore, in every way more than probable; and there 
is a poetic pleasure in the reflection that the family 
still retains, in the house which Beaumont probably 
often visited, this noble presentment of the drama- 
tist. 

The portrait at Nuneham, which I have mentioned 
above, is not so life-like as that at Knole: it lacks the 
shading. But it is for us most expressive: it is that 
of an older man, spade-bearded, of broader brow, 
higher cheek-bones, and face falling away toward the 
chin; of the same magnanimity and grace, but with 
eyes more almond-shaped and sensitive, and eloquent 
of illness. It is the likeness of Beaumont approaching 
the portals of death. 

Of the personality of Beaumont we have already 
had glimpses through the window of his non-dramatic 

1 Clark's Aubrey^ s Brief Lives, II, 175, 239. Not Mary (Cur- 
zon), the wife of the fourth Earl, as Professor Elton, Drayton 
(1895), P- 45, has it. 




By permission of Mr. Lewis Harcourt. 



THE BEAUMONT 

OF THE 

NUNEHAM PORTRAIT 



HIS PERSONALITY 193 

poems. His letter to Ben Jonson has revealed him 
chafing in enforced exile from London, amusedly tol- 
erant of the '' standing family-jests " of country gen- 
tlemen, tired of " water mixed with claret-lees " " with 
one draught *' of which '' man's invention fades," and 
yearning for the Mermaid wine of poetic converse, 
" nimble, and full of subtle flame." Other verses to 
Jonson and to Fletcher express his scorn of " the 
wild applause of common people," his confidence in 
sympathetic genius and Time as the only arbiters of 
literary worth. In still other poems, lyric, epistolary, 
and elegiac, we have savoured the tang of his humour, 
— unsophisticated, somewhat ammoniac; and from 
them have caught his habit of emotional utterance, 
frank and sincere, whether in admiration, love, or in- 
dignation. We have grown acquainted with his rever- 
ence for womanly purity; with his religion of suffering, 
his recognition of mortal pathos, irony, futility, and 
yet of inscrutable purpose and control, and of the 
countervailing serenity that awaits us in the grave. 
An amusing side-light is thrown upon his character 
by Jonson who told Drummond of Hawthornden, that 
" Francis Beaumont loved too much himself and his 
own verses." We are glad to know that a man of 
Jonson's well-attested self-esteem encountered in 
Beaumont an arrogance and a consciousness of poetic 
superiority ; that even this *' great lover and praiser 
of himself, contemner and scorner of others," for 
whom Spenser's stanzas were not pleasing, nor his 
matter, and '' Shakespeare wanted art," — that even 
this great brow-beater of his contemporaries in liter- 
ature, recognized in our poet a self-esteem which even 



194 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

he could not bully out of him. But we must not be 
harsh in our judgment of Drummond's Ben Jonson, 
for though he " was given rather to lose a friend 
than a jest and was jealous of every word and action 
of those about him," this is not the Ben who some 
seven years earlier had written " How I do love thee, 
Beaumont, and thy Muse " ; this is Ben as Drummond 
saw him in 1619 — Ben talking "especially after 
drink which is one of the elements in which he liv- 
eth." That Beaumont's affection and geniality of 
intercourse were reciprocated not only by Jonson, but 
by others, we learn from lines written to, or of, him 
by men of worth. 

His judgment as a critic was recognized by his 
contemporaries, as well as the poetic brilliance of the 
dramas which he was creating under their eyes. His 
language, too, was praised for its distinction while 
he w^as yet living. In the manuscript outline of the 
Hypercritica, which appears to have been filled in at 
various times between 1602 and 16 16, Bolton says: 
" the books out of which wee gather the most war- 
rantable English are not many to my remembrance. 
. . . But among the cheife, or rather the cheife, are 
in my opinion these : Sir Thomas Moore's works ; . . . 
George Chapman's first seaven books of Iliades ; Sam- 
uell Danyell; Michael Drayton his Heroicall Epistles 
of England; Marlowe his excellent fragment of Hero 
and Leander; Shakespeare, Mr. Francis Beamont, 
and innumerable other writers for the stage, — and 
[they] presse tenderly to be used in this Argument; 
Southwell, Parsons, and some few other of that sort." 
In the final version of the Hyfer critical prepared be- 



CONTEMPORARY REPUTATION 195 

tween 1616 and 1618/ Bolton omits the later drama- 
tists altogether ; ^ but that is not to be construed by 
way of discrimination against Shakespeare and Beau- 
mont. There is no doubt that Bolton knew the Beau- 
monts personally, and appreciated their worth, and 
as early as 1610; — for to his Elements of Armories 
of that year, he prefixes a "Letter to the Author, 
from the learned young gentleman, I, B., of Grace- 
Dieu in the County of Leicestershire, Esquier," ^ 
who highly compliments the invention, judicial method, 
and taste displayed in the Elements, and returns the 
manuscript with promise of his patronage. 

Further information of the esteem in which Francis 
was held, is afforded by the eulogies, direct or indirect, 
written soon after his death by those who were near 
enough to him in years to have known him, or to 
assess his worth untrammeled by the critical con- 
sensus of a generation that knew him not. The tender 
tributes of his brother and of his contemporary. Dr. 
Corbet, successively Bishop of Oxford, and of Nor- 
wich, have already been quoted. A so-called " son- 
net," signed L F., included in an Harleian manuscript 
between two poems undoubtedly by Fletcher, may 
not have been intended for the dead poet; but I agree 
with Dyce, who first printed it,^ that it seems " very 
like Fletcher's epicede on his beloved associate " : — 

1 After the appearance of Montague's edition of King James's 
Works, and before the execution of Raleigh. 

2 Save for non-dramatic productions such as Ben Jonson's 
Epigrams, etc. 

3 Grosart, D.N.B., art, Sir John Beaumont, and Sir J. B.'s 
Poems, xxxvi. 

45. and F.,Yo\. I, lii. 



196 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Come, sorrow, come! bring all thy cries, 

All thy laments, and all thy weeping eyes ! 

Burn out, you living monuments of woe ! 

Sad sullen griefs, now rise and overflow! 

Virtue is dead; 

O cruel fate! 

All youth is fled; 

All our laments too late. 

Oh, noble youth, to thy ne'er-dying name, 
Oh, happy youth, to thy still-growing fame, 
To thy long peace in earth, this sacred knell 
Our last loves ring — farewell, farewell, farewell ! 
Go, happy soul, to thy eternal birth! 
And press his body lightly, gentle Earth! 

What the young readers of contemporary poetry 
at the universities thought of him is nowhere better 
expressed than in the lines written immediately after 
the poet's death by the fifteen- or sixteen-year-old 
John Earle; — he who was later Fellow of Merton; 
and in turn Bishop of Worcester, and of Salisbury. 
The ardent lad is gazing in person or imagination 
on the new-filled tomb in the Poets' Corner, when he 
writes : 

Beaumont lyes here ; and where now shall we have 
A Muse like his, to sigh upon his grave? 
Ah, none to weepe this with a worthy teare, 
But he that cannot, Beaumont that lies here. 
Who now shall pay thy Tombe with such a Verse 
As thou that Ladies didst, faire Rutlands Herse? 
A Monument that will then lasting be. 
When all her Marble is more dust than she. 
In thee all 's lost : a sudden dearth and want 



CONTEMPORARY REPUTATION 197 

Hath seiz'd on Wit, good Epitaphs are scant ; 
We dare not write thy Elegie, whilst each feares 
He nere shall match that coppy of thy teares. 
Scarce in an Age a Poet, — and yet he 
Scarce lives the third part of his age to see, 
But quickly taken off, and only known, 
Is in a minute shut as soone as showne. . . . 

Why should Nature take such pains to perfect that 
which ere perfected she shall destroy? — 

Beaumont dies young, so Sidney died before; 
There was not Poetry he could live to, more: 
He could not grow up higher; I scarce know 
If th' art it self unto that pitch could grow, 
Were 't not in thee that hadst arriv'd the hight 
Of all that wit could reach, or Nature might . . . 

The elegist likens Beaumont to Menander, 

Whose few sententious fragments show more worth 

Than all the Poets Athens ere brought forth ; 

And I am sorry I have lost those houres 

On them, whose quicknesse comes far short of ours. 

And dwelt not more on thee, whose every Page 

May be a patterne to their Scene and Stage. 

I will not yeeld thy Workes so mean a Prayse, — 

More pure, more chaste, more sainted than are Playes, 

Nor with that dull supinenesse to be read. 

To passe a lire, or laugh an houre in bed. . . . 

Why should not Beaumont in the Morning please. 

As well as Plautus, Aristophanes? 

Who, if my Pen may as my thoughts be free. 

Were scurrill Wits and Buffons both to Thee. . . 

Yet these are Wits, because they 'r old, and now. 



198 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Being Greeke and Latine, they are Learning too : 

But those their owne Times were content t' allow 

A thriftier fame, and thine is lowest now. 

But thou shall live, and, when thy Name is growne 

Six Ages older, shall be better knowne ; 

When thou 'rt of Chancers standing in the Tombe, 

Thou shall not share, but take up all his roome.^ 

A panegyric liberal in the superlatives of youth but, 
in view of passages to be quoted elsewhere, one of 
the sanest as well as earliest appreciations of Beau- 
mont's distinctive quality as a dramatist; an ap- 
preciation such as the historian might expect from a 
collegian who, a dozen years later, was not only one 
of the most genial and refined scholars of his gen- 
eration but, perhaps, the most accurate observer and 
epitomist of the familiar types and minor morals of 
his day, — a writer who in 1628 is still championing 
the cause of contemporary poetry. In his character- 
ization of the Vulgar-Spirited Man " that is taken 
only with broad and obscene wit, and hisses anything 
too deep for him; that cries, Chaucer for his money 
above all our English poets, because the voice has 
gone so, and he has read none," the Earle of the 
Micro cosmographie is but repeating the censure of his 
elegy on Beaumont in 161 6. 

About 1620, we find a contemporary of altogether 
different class from that of the university student ac- 
knowledging the fame of Beaumont, the Thames wa- 
terman, John Taylor. This self-advertising tramp and 

1 Revised by Earle for the Commendatory Verses, Folio 1647; 
but I have retained some of the readings of the 1640 copy in- 
cluded in Beaumont's Poems. 



CONTEMPORARY REPUTATION 199 

rollicking scribbler mentions him in The Praise of 
Hemp-seed with Chaucer, Spencer, Shakespeare, and 
others, as of those who, " in paper-immortality, Doe 
live in spight of death, and cannot die." And not far 
separated from Taylor's testimonial in point of time is 
William Basse's prediction of a prouder immortality. 
Basse who was but two years older than Beaumont, 
and, as we have seen, was one of the pastoral group 
with which Beaumont's career was associated, is writ- 
ing of " Mr. William Shakespeare " who had died 
six weeks after Beaumont, — and he thus apostro- 
phizes the Westminster poets of the Corner : 

Renowned Spencer, lye a thought more nye 

To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lye 

A little neerer Spencer, to make roome 

For Shakespeare in your threefold, fowerfold Tombe. 

To lodge all foure in one bed make a shift 

Untill Doomesdaye, for hardly will a fift. 

Betwixt this day and that, by Fate be slayne 

For whom your Curtaines may be drawn againe. 

The date of the sonnet of which these are the opening 
lines can be only approximately determined. It must 
be earlier, however, than 1623 ; for in that year Jon- 
son alludes to it in verses presently to be quoted. And 
it must be later than the erection of the monument 
to Shakespeare's memory in Trinity Church, Strat- 
ford, in or soon after 1618, for in the lines which 
follow those given above the writer apostrophizes 
Shakespeare as sleeping " Under this carved marble 
of thine owne." The sonnet contemplates the re- 
moval of Shakespeare's remains to Westminster, and 



200 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

arranges the poets already lying there not in actual 
but chronological order. ^ 

To these verses Jonson, as I have said, alludes in 
the series of stanzas prefixed to the Shakespeare folio 
of 1623, — To the memory of my beloved, the Author, 
Mr. William Shakespeare and what he hath left ns. 
Ben Jonson intends, however, no slight to Beaumont 
and the other poets mentioned by Basse, when, in 
his rapturous eulogy, he declines to regard them as the 
peers of Shakespeare. On the contrary this lover at 
heart, and in his best moments, of Beaumont, bestows 
a meed of praise: they are " great Muses," — Chaucer, 
Spenser, Beaumont, — but merely " disproportioned," 
if one judge critically, in the present comparison, as 
are, indeed, Lyly, Kyd, and Marlowe. Not these, but 
" thundering ^schylus," Euripides, and Sophocles, 
Pacuvius, Accius, " him of Cordova dead," must be 
summoned 

To life againe to heare thy Buskin tread 
And shake a Stage. 

Therefore it is, that Jonson calls — 

My Shakespeare rise; I will not lodge thee by 
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye 

A little further to make thee a roome: 
Thou art a Moniment without a toombe, 

1 The version given above is that of Brit. Mus. MS. Lans- 
downe yyy. Of other versions one is attributed to Donne; but 
the Lansdowne is the most authentic, and the evidence of author- 
ship is all for Basse, whose name follows in the Lansdowne 
manuscript. So, Miss L. T. Smith in Centurie of Praise, p. 139. 



CONTEMPORARY REPUTATION 201 

And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live, 
And v^e have wits to read, and praise to give. 

That I not mixe thee so, my braine excuses ; 
I meane with great, but disproportion'd Muses. 

That Beaumont was regarded by his immediate con- 
temporaries not as a professional, but literary, drama- 
tist, — a poet, and a person of social eminence, — ap- 
pears from Drayton's Epistle to Henery Reynolds, 
Esq., Of Poets and Poesy, published 1627, from which 
I have earlier quoted. Here the writer, appraising 
the poets " who have enrich'd our language with their 
rhymes " informs his ^' dearly loved friend " that he 
does not 

meane to run 
In quest of these that them applause have wonne 
Upon our Stages in these latter dayes. 
That are so many ; let them have their bayes, 
That doe deserve it ; let those wits that haunt 
Those publique circuits, let them freely chaunt 
Their fine Composures, and their praise pursue; 

and thus, we may conjecture, he excuses the omission 
of such men as Middleton, Fletcher, and Massinger. 
Beginning with Chaucer, '' the first of ours that ever 
brake Into the Muses' treasure, and first spake In 
weighty numbers," Drayton pays especial honour to 
" grave, morall Spencer," " noble Sidney . . . heroe 
for numbers and for prose," Marlowe with his " brave 
translunary things," Shakespeare of ''as smooth a 
comicke vaine ... as strong conception, and as cleere 
a rage. As any one that trafiqu'd wath the Stage," 
" learn'd Johnson . . . Who had drunke deepe of 



202 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

the Pierian spring," and " reverend Chapman " for 
his translations : then he passes to men of letters whom 
he had loved, Alexander and Drummond, and con- 
cludes the roll-call with his two Beaumonts and his 
Browne, his bosom friends, rightly born poets and 
" Men of much note, and no lesse nobler parts." 
This letter not only speaks the opinion of Drayton 
concerning the standing of the two Beaumonts in 
poetry, but incidentally asserts the popularity of their 
work, for the author informs his correspondents that 
he '' ties himself here only to those few men " 

Whose works oft printed, set on every post. 
To publique censure subject have bin most. 

By 1627 all of the dramas in which Francis had an 
undoubted share, except The Coxcombe had been 
printed; and some of his poems had appeared as early 
as 1 618 in a little volume that included also Drayton's 
elegies on Lady Penelope Clifton and the three sons 
of Lord Sheffield, and Verses by ' N. H.' 

This volume is Henry Fitzgeffrey's Certayn elegies 
done by sundrie excellent wits (Fr. Beau., M. Dr., 
N. H.), with Satyr es and Epigrames. Fitzgeffrey, 
by the way, was of Lincoln's Inn in Beaumont's time; 
and so were others connected with this volume, by 
dedications or commendatory verses : Fitzgeffrey's 
'' chamber- fellow and nearest friend, Nat. Gurlin " ; 
Thomas Fletcher, and John Stephens, the satirist, who 
had been entered member of the Inn in 161 1. They 
must all have been known by Beaumont when he was 
writing his elegies. The * N. H.' thus posthumously 
associated with our dramatist was, I think, the mathe- 




MICHAEL DRAYTON 

From the portrait in the Dulwich Gallery 



CONTEMPORARY REPUTATION 203 

matician, philosopher, and poet, Nicholas Hill ^ 
Beaumont could not have failed to know him. He 
was of St. John's College, Oxford; he wrote and 
published a Philosophia Epicurea Democritiana to 
which, mentioning him by name, Ben Jonson alludes 
in his epigram (CXXXIV) Of The Famous Voyage 
of the two wights who " At Bread-streets Mermaid 
having dined and merry, Propos'd to goe to Holborne 
in a wherry." He was the secretary and favourite of 
Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was a good deal 
of a wag, and well acquainted with our old friend 
Serjeant Hoskyns of the Convivmm Philosophicum. 
He died in 1610. 

Whether the anonymous writer on The Time Poets ^ 
was a personal acquaintance of Beaumont we cannot 
tell. The definite qualities of the poet which he em- 
phasizes are, however, as likely to be drawn from life 
and conversation as from the perusal of his dramas. 
The lines, apparently composed between 1620 and 
1636, begin. 

One night, the great Apollo, pleas'd with Ben, 
Made the odde number of the Muses ten; 
The fluent Fletcher, Beaumont rich in sense, 
In complement and courtship's quintessence; 
Ingenious Shakespeare, Massinger that knows 
The strength of plot to write in verse or prose, — 

and continue with '' cloud-grappling Chapman " and 
others, as of the ten Muses. 

1 Mr. Bullen, D.N.B., under Fitzgeifrey, queries " Nathaniel 
Hooke." I have not been able to identify Hooke. 

2 Choice Drollery, Songs, and Sonnets, 1656, in Sh. Soc. Pap., 
Ill, 172. 



204 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

That Thomas Heywood, the dramatist, was a per- 
sonal friend, — we may be sure, — the kind of friend 
who having a sense of humour did not resent Beau- 
mont's genial satire in The Knight of the Burning 
Pestle upon his bourgeois drama of The Foure Pren- 
tises of London, Writing as late as 1635, he remem- 
bers Francis as a wit : 

Excellent Bewmont, in the formost ranke 

Of the rarest Wits, was never more than Franck. — 

The touch of familiarity with which Heywood ^ causes 
that whole row of poets, many of them then dead, 
Robin Green, Kit Marlowe, the Toms (Kyd, Watson 
and Nashe), mellifluous Will, Ben, and the rest, to 
live for posterity as human, and lovable, gracefully 
heightens the compliment for one and all. 

We may surmise that one more eulogist of Beau- 
mont, his kinsman,^ Sir George Lisle, a marvellously 
gallant cavalier, who distinguished himself at New- 
berry, and was shot by order of Fairfax about the 
end of the Civil War, was old enough in 161 6 to have 
known our poet Though Sir George, in his verses 
for the Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647, ^^Y^ 
special stress upon the close- woven fancy of the two 
playwrights, he seems to have a first-hand information, 
not common to the younger writers of these com- 
mendatory poems, concerning Beaumont's share in at 
least one of the tragedies. He ascribes to him, not 
to Fletcher, — as we know by modern textual tests, 

1 The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells. 

2 Through the Villierses and therefore probably through the 
Coleorton Beaumonts. 



CONTEMPORARY REPUTATION 205 

correctly, — the nobler scenes of '' brave Mardonius " 
in A King and No King. One attaches, therefore, 
more than mere literary, or hearsay, significance to 
his selection for special praise of Beaumont's force, 
when he says, 

Thou strik'st our sense so deep, 
At once thou mak'st us Blush, Re Joyce, and Weep. 
Great father Johnson bow'd himselfe when hee 
(Thou writ'st so nobly) vow'd he envy'd thee. 



CHAPTER XIV 

TRADITION, AND TRADITIONAL CRITICISM 

WHAT we learn from tradition, and from the 
criticism of the century following Beaumont's 
death, adds little to what we already have observed 
concerning his life and personality. Concerning his 
share in the joint-plays, it adds much, mostly wrong; 
but of that, later. Mosely, in his address of The 
Stationer to the Readers prefixed to the folio of 1647, 
announces that knowing persons had generally assured 
him " that these Authors were the most unquestionable 
Wits this Kingdome hath afforded. Mr. Beaumont 
was ever acknowledged a man of a most strong and 
searching braine; and (his yeares considered) the 
most Judicious Wit these later Ages have produced. 
He dyed young, for (which was an invaluable losse 
to this Nation) he left the world when hee was not 
full thirty yeares old. Mr. Fletcher survived, and 
lived till almost fifty; whereof the World now enjoyes 
the benefit.'' The dramatist, Shirley, in his address 
To the Reader of the folio, says *' It is not so remote 
in Time, but very many Gentlemen may remember 
these Authors; and some familiar in their conversa- 
tion deliver them upon every pleasant occasion so 
fluent, to talke a Comedy. He must be a bold man,'* 
continues he, with a prophetic commonsense, *' that 

206 



TRADITIONAL CRITICISM 207 

dares undertake to write their Lives. What I have 
to say is, we have the precious Remaines; and as the 
wisest contemporaries acknowledge they Lived a Mir- 
acle, I am very confident this volume cannot die with- 
out one." Shirley also reminds the Reader that but 
to mention Beaumont and Fletcher " is to throw a 
cloude upon all former names and benight Posterity." 
*' This Book being, without flattery, the greatest Mon- 
ument of the Scene that Time and Humanity have 
produced, and must Live, not only the Crowne and sole 
Reputation of our owne, but the stayne of all other 
Nations and Languages." To such a pitch had the 
vogue of our dramatists risen in the thirty years after 
Beaumont's death ! Not only Shakespeare and learned 
Ben, but Sophocles and Euripides may vail to them. 
" This being," — and here we catch a vision from life 
itself, — '' this being the Authentick witt that made 
Blackfriars an Academy, where the three bowers spec- 
tacle while Beaumont and Fletcher were presented, 
were usually of more advantage to the hope full young 
Heire, than a costly, dangerous, forraigne Travell, 
with the assistance of a governing Mounsieur, or 
Signior, to boote. And it cannot be denied but that 
the spirits of the Time, whose Birth and Qualitie made 
them impatient of the sowrer ways of education, have 
from the attentive hearing these pieces, got ground 
in point of wit and carriage of the most severely em- 
ployed Students, while these Recreations were digested 
into Rules, and the very pleasure did edifie." 

So far as the plays printed in this folio are con- 
cerned, not much of this praise belongs to Beaumont; 
for, as we now know, not more than two of them, 



2o8 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

The Coxcombe and the Masque of the Inner Temple, 
bear his impress. But Shirley is thinking of the repu- 
tation of the authors in general; and he writes with 
an eye to the sale of the book. 

Since we shall presently find opportunity to con- 
sider the trend of opinion during the seventeenth cen- 
tury regarding the respective shares of the dramatists 
in composition, but a word need be said here upon the 
subject, — and that as to the origin of a tradition 
speedily exaggerated into error: namely, that Beau- 
mont's function in the partnership was purely 
of gravity and critical acumen. From the verses of 
John Berkenhead, an Oxford man, born in 1615, a 
writer of some lampooning ability and, in 1647 reader 
in moral philosophy at the University, we learn that, 
he, at least, thought it impossible to separate the 
faculties of the two dramatists, which " as two Voices 
in one Song embrace (Fletcher's keen Trebble, and 
deep Beaumont's Base"); that, however, there were 
some in his day who held " That One [Fletcher] the 
Sock, th' Other [Beaumont] the Buskin claim'd," 

That should the Stage embattaile all its Force, 
Fletcher would lead the Foot, Beaumont the Horse; 

and that Beaumont's was " the understanding," Fletch- 
er's " the quick free will." Such discrimination, as I 
have said, Berkenhead disavows; but he is of the 
opinion, nevertheless, that the rules by which their art 
was governed came from Beaumont: 

So Beaumont dy'd ; yet left in Legacy 

His Rules and Standard-wit (Fletcher) to Thee. 



TRADITIONAL CRITICISM 209 

And still another Oxford man, born four years be- 
fore Beaumont's death, the Reverend Josias Howe, 
reasserting the essential unity of their compositions, 
concedes with regard to Fletcher, — 

Perhaps his quill flew stronger, when 
'T was weaved with his Beaumont's pen ; 
And might with deeper wonder hit. 

These and similar statements of 1647, essentially cor- 
rect, concerning the force, depth, and critical acumen 
of Beaumont had been anticipated in the testimonials 
printed during his lifetime and down to 1640, espe- 
cially in those of Jonson, Davies, Drayton, and Earle. 
A verdict, much more dogmatic, and responsible for 
the erroneous tradition which long survived, proceeded 
from one of the " sons of Ben," William Cartwright, 
himself an author of dramas, junior proctor of the 
University of Oxford in 1643, ^^^ *' the most florid 
and seraphical preacher in the university." He may 
have derived the germ of his information from Jon- 
son himself, but he had developed it in a one-sided 
manner when, writing in 1643 " upon the report of 
the printing of the dramaticall poems of Master John 
Fletcher," he implied that the genius of " knowing 
Beaumont " was purely restrictive and critical, — tell- 
ing us that Beaumont was fain to bid Fletcher *' be 
more dull," to " write again," to " bate some of his 
fire " ; and that even when Fletcher had " blunted and 
allayed " his genius according to the critic's command, 
the critic Beaumont, not yet satisfied. 

Added his sober spunge, and did contract 
Thy plenty to lesse wit to make 't exact. 



2IO BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

This distorted image of Beaumont's artistic quality 
as merely critical lived, as we shall see, for many a 
year. We shall, also, see that it is not from any 
such secondary sources that supplementary informa- 
tion regarding the poet himself is to be derived, but 
from a scientific determination of his share in the 
dramas ordinarily and vaguely assigned to an undif- 
ferentiated Beaumont and Fletcher. 



CHAPTER XV 

A FEW WORDS OF FLETCHER's LATER YEARS 

T3ESIDE the dramas which there is any meritori- 
-■^ ous reason for assigning to the joint-authorship 
of the two friends, some dozen plays were produced 
by Fletcher alone, or in collaboration with others, 
before the practical cessation, in 1613, or thereabout, 
of Beaumont's dramatic activity. After that time 
Fletcher's name was attached, either as sole author 
or as the associate of Massinger, Field, William Row- 
ley, and perhaps others, to about thirty more. From 
1614 on, he was the successor of Shakespeare as dra- 
matic poet of the King's Players. Jonson's masques 
delighted the Court, but no writer of tragedy or com- 
edy, — not Jonson, nor Philip Massinger, who was 
now Fletcher's closest associate, nor Middleton or 
Rowley, Dekker, Fo^rd, or Webster, — compared with 
him in popularity at Court and in the City. He is 
not merely an illustrious personality, the principal au- 
thor of harrowing tragedies such as Valentinian, the 
sole author of tragicomedies such as The Loyall Sub- 
ject, and long-lived comedies — The Chances, Rule a 
Wife and Have a Wife, and several more, — he is a 
syndicate : he stands sponsor for plays like The Queene 
of Corinth and The Knight of Malta in which others 
collaborated largely with him; and his name is occa- 

211 



212 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

sionally stamped upon plays of associates, in which he 
had no hand whatever. " Thou grew'st," says his 
contemporary and admirer, John Harris, — 

" Thou grew'st to govern the whole Stage alone : 
In which orbe thy throng'd light did make the star, 
Thou wert th' Intelligence did move that Sphear. 

Dr. Harris, Professor of Greek at Oxford in the hey- 
day of Fletcher's glory, and a most distinguished di- 
vine, writes, in 1647, ^s one who had known Fletcher, 
personally, — observes his careless ease in composing, 
his manner of conversation. 

The Stage grew narrow while thou grew'st to be 
In thy whole life an Excellent Comedie, — 

and admires his behaviour: 

To these a Virgin-modesty which first met 
Applause with blush and fear, as if he yet 
Had not deserv'd; till bold with constant praise 
His browes admitted the unsought-for Bayes. 

So, addressing the public, concludes this panegyrist, — 

Hee came to be sole Monarch, and did raign 
In Wits great Empire, abs'lute Soveraign. 

It is of these years of triumph that another of " the 
large train of Fletcher's friends," Richard Brome, Ben 
Jonson's faithful servant and loving friend, and his 
disciple in the drama, tells us: 



FLETCHER IN LATER YEARS 213 

His Works (says Momus) nay, his Plays you'd say: 
Thou hast said right, for that to him was Play 
Which was to others braines a toyle: with ease 
He playd on Waves which were Their troubled 

Seas. . . . 
But to the Man againe, of whom we write, 
The Writer that made Writing his Delight, 
Rather then Worke. He did not pumpe, nor drudge. 
To beget Wit, or manage it; nor trudge 
To Wit-conventions with Note-booke, to gleane 
Or steale some Jests to foist into a Scene: 
He scorn'd those shifts. You that have known him, know 
The common talke that from his Lips did flow, 
And run at waste, did savour more of Wit, 
Then any of his time, or since have writ, 
(But few excepted) in the Stages way: 
His Scenes were Acts, and every Act a Play. 
I knew him in his strength ; even then when He — 
That was the Master of his Art and Me — 
Most knowing Johnson (proud to call him Sonne) 
In friendly Envy swore. He had out-done 
His very Selfe. I knew him till he dyed; 
And at his dissolution, what a Tide 
Of sorrow overwhelm'd the Stage; which gave 
Volleys of sighes to send him to his grave ; 
And grew distracted in most violent Fits 
(For She had lost the best part of her Wits) . . . 

" Others," concludes this old admirer unpretentiously, 

Others may more in lofty Verses move; 

I onely, thus, expresse my Truth and Love. 

No better testimony to the character of the man 
who, even though Jonson was still writing, became 



214 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

absolute sovereign of the stage after Shakespeare 
and Beaumont had ceased, can be found than such 
as the preceding. To Fletcher's innate modesty, other 
contemporaries, Lowin and Taylor, who acted in many 
of his plays, bear testimony in the Dedication of The 
Wild-Goose Chase: " The Play was of so Generall 
a receiv'd Acceptance, that (he Himself a Spectator) 
we have known him unconcern'd, and to have wisht 
it had been none of His; He, as well as the throng'd 
Theatre (in despite of his innate Modesty) Applaud- 
ing this rare issue of his Braine." He was the idol 
of his actors : *' And now, Farewell, our Glory ! " 
continue, in 1652, these victims of " a cruell Destinie " 

— the closing of the theatres at the outbreak of the 
Civil War, — " Farewell, your Choice Delight, most 
noble Gentlemen! Farewell, the grand Wheel that 
set Us Smaller Motions in Action!" — The wheel of 
Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger. 
— '' Farewell, the Pride and Life o' the Stage! Nor 
can we (though in our Ruin) much repine that we 
are so little, since He that gave us being is no more." 

Fletcher was beloved of great men, as they them- 
selves have left their love on record, of Jonson, Beau- 
mont, Chapman, Massinger. If Shakespeare collab- 
orated with him, that speaks for itself. He was an 
inspiration to young pastoralists like Browne, and to 
aspiring dramatists like Field. He was a writer of 
sparkling genius and phenomenal facility. He was 
careless of myopic criticism, conscious of his dignity, 

— but unaffectedly simple, — averse to flattering his 
public or his patron for bread, or for acquaintance, or 
for the admiration of the indolent, or for " itch of 



FLETCHER'S PERSONALITY 215 

greater fame." ^ If we may take him at his word, 
and estimate him by the noblest Hnes he ever wrote, — 
the verses affixed to The Honest Mans Fortune 
(acted, 1613), — the keynote of his character as a man 
among men, was independence. To those " that can 
look through Heaven, and tell the stars," he says : 

Man is his own Star, and the soul that can 
Render an honest and a perfect man, 
Commands all light, all influence, all fate; 
Nothing to him falls early, or too late. 
Our Acts our Angels are, or good or ill. 
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still ; 
And when the Stars are labouring, we believe 
It is not that they govern, but they grieve 
For stubborn ignorance. 

That star is in '' the Image of thy Maker's good " : 

He is my Star, in him all truth I find, 
All influence, all fate; 

and as for poverty, it is " the light to Heaven . . . 
Nor want, the cause of man, shall make me groan " ; 
for experience teaches us ^' all we can : To work our- 
selves into a glorious man." His mistress is not 
some star of Love, with the increase to wealth or 
honour she may bring, but of Knowledge and fair 
Truth : 

So I enjoy all beauty and all youth, 

And though to time her Lights and Laws she lends, 

She knows no Age, that to corruption bends. . . . 

Perhaps through all this, there echoes the voice of that 
1 See his Ode to Sir William Skipwith. 



2i6 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

prcBsul splendiduSy his father, the Bishop, the friend 
of Sir Francis Drake, of Burghley, and of the forceful 
Bishop Bancroft, — a father soHcitous, at any rate be- 
fore he fell into the hands of his fashionable second 
wife and lost favour with the Queen, for the " Chrys- 
tian and godlie education " of his children. However 
that may be, — whether the noble idea of this confes- 
sion of faith is a projection from the discipline of 
youth or an induction from the experience of life, 
the utterance of Fletcher's inmost personality is here : 

Man is his own Star, and that soul that can 
Be honest, is the only perfect man. 

Though, in the plays where Beaumont does not con- 
trol, Fletcher so freely reflects the loose morals of his 
age, the gross conventional misapprehension of wom- 
an's worth, even the cynicism regarding her essential 
purity, — though Fletcher reflects these conditions in his 
later plays as well as in his early Faithfull Shep- 
heardesse,^ and though he, for dramatic ends, accepts 
the material vulgarity of the lower classes and the 
perverted and decadent heroics of the upper, there 
still are ^' passages in his works where he recurs to a 
conception which undoubtedly had a very vital sig- 
nificance for him — that of a gentleman," — to the 
*' merit, manners, and inborn virtue " of the gentleman 
not conventional but genuine.^ In Beaumont, that 

1 " Thou wert not meant, Sure, for a woman, thou art so inno- 
cent," philosophizes the Sullen Shepherd concerning Amoret ; — 
and not only wanton nymphs but modest swains are of the same 
philosophy. 

2 Ward, E. Dr. Lit., II, 649, — quoting, in the footnote, from 
The Nice Valour, V, 3. 



THE PORTRAITS OF FLETCHER 217 

" man of a most strong and searching braine " whose 
writings and whose record speak the gentleman, he 
had had the example beside him in the flesh. What 
that meant is manifest in the encomium of Francis 
Palmer, written in 1647 from Christ Church, Ox- 
ford, 

All commendations end 
In saying only : Thou wert Beaumont's friend. 

The engraving of Fletcher in the 1647 ^olio was 
" cut by severall Originall Pieces,*' says Mosely 
'' which his friends lent me, but withall they tell me 
that his unimitable Soule did shine through his coun- 
tenance in such Ayre and Spirit, that the Painters 
confessed it was not easie to expresse him : As much 
as could be, you have here, and the Graver hath done 
his part." The edition of 171 1 is the first to publish 
" effigies " of both poets, " the Head of Mr. Beaumont, 
and that of Mr. Fletcher, through the favour of the 
present Earl of Dorset [the seventh Earl], being taken 
from Originals in the noble Collection his Lordship 
has at Knowles." The engravings in the Theobald, 
Seward and Sympson edition of 1 742-1 750 are by G. 
Vertue. The engravings in Colman's edition of 1778, 
are the same, debased. Those in Weber's edition of 
1812, are done afresh, — of Beaumont by Evans, of 
Fletcher by Blood — apparently from the Knole orig- 
inals. They are an improvement upon those of earlier 
editions. In Dyce's edition of 1 843-1 846, H. Robin- 
son's engraving of Beaumont has nobility; his attempt 
at Fletcher does not improve upon Blood's. All these 
are in the reverse. The Variorum edition of 1904- 



2i8 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

1905 gives the beautiful photogravure of Beaumont 
of which I have already spoken, by Walker and Cock- 
erell, from the original at Knole Park ; and an equally 
soft and expressive photogravure of Fletcher, by Em- 
ery Walker, from the painting in the National Portrait 
Gallery. For the first time the dramatists face as in 
the originals: Beaumont, toward your left, Fletcher, 
toward your right. 

Fletcher's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery 
reveals a highbred, thoughtful countenance, large eyes 
unafraid, wide-awake and keen, the nose aquiline and 
sensitive, wavily curling hair, hastily combed back, 
or through which he has run his fingers, a careless, 
half-buttoned jerkin from which the shirt peeps forth, 
— all in all a man of more vivacious temper, ready and 
practical quality than Beaumont. 

The authorities of the Gallery, especially through 
the kindness of Mr. J. D. Milner, who has been good 
enough to look up various particulars for me, inform 
me that this portrait of John Fletcher, No. 420, was 
purchased by the Trustees in March 1876, its previous 
history being unknown. The painting is by a con- 
temporary but unknown artist, and is similar to the 
portrait at Knole Park. It was engraved in the re- 
verse by G. Vertue in 1729. They also inform me 
that another portrait of a different type belongs to 
the Earl of Clarendon. This, I conjecture, must be 
that which John Evelyn, in a letter to Samuel Pepys, 
12 August, 1689, says he has seen in the first Earl of 
Clarendon's collection — "most of which [portraits], 
if not all, are at the present at Cornebery in Oxford- 
shire." But Evelyn adds that " Beaumont and 



THE PORTRAITS OF FLETCHER 219 

Fletcher were both in one piece." Yet another por- 
trait said to be of Fletcher, painted in 1625 by C. 
Janssen, belongs to the Duke of Portland. This 
Janssen is the Cornelius to whom the alleged portrait 
of Shakespeare, now at Bulstrode, is attributed. Cor- 
nelius did not come to England before Shakespeare's 
death; and, consequently, not before Beaumont's. 

Fletcher died in August 1625. According to Au- 
brey, '' In the great plague, 1625, a Knight of Norfolke 
(or Suffolke) invited him into the Countrey. He 
stayed but to make himself e a suite of cloathes, and 
while it was makeing, fell sick of the plague and 
dyed. This I had [1668] from his tayler, who is 
now [1670] a very old man, and clarke of St. Mary 
Overy's." The dramatist was buried in St. Saviour's, 
Southwark, the twenty-ninth of that month. Sir 
Aston Cockayne's statement, in an epitaph on Fletcher 
and Massinger, that they lie in the same grave, is 
probably figurative. Aubrey tells us that Massinger, 
who died in March 1640, and whose burial is re- 
corded in the register of St. Saviour's, was buried 
not in the church, but about the middle of one of its 
churchyards, the Bullhead, next the Bullhead tav- 
ern. There are memorials now to both poets in the 
church, as also to Shakespeare, and Beaumont, and 
to Edward Alleyn, the actor of the old Admiral's com- 
pany. 

It is generally supposed that Fletcher was never 
married. The name, John Fletcher, was not unusual 
in the parish of St. Saviour's, and the records of 
*' John Fletcher " marriages may, therefore, not in- 
volve the dram,atist. But two items communicated to 



220 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Dyce ^ by Collier, " more in jest than in earnest," 
from the Parish-registers, are suggestive, if we reflect 
that, about 1612 or 161 3, the menage a trois, provided 
it continued so long, would have lapsed at the time 
of Beaumont's marriage; and if we can swallow the 
stage-fiction of Fletcher's " maid Joan " in Bury-Fair 
(see page 96 above), whole and as something di- 
gestible. 

These are Collier's cullings from the Registers: 

1612. Nov. 3. John Fletcher and Jone Herring 
[were married]. Reg. of St. Saviour's, Southwark. 

John, the son of John Fletcher and of Joan his wife 
was baptized 25 Feb., 1619. Reg. of St. Bartholomezv 
the Great. 

If this is our John Fletcher, his marriage would have 
been about the same time as Beaumont's, and he may 
have later taken up his residence in the parish of St. 
Bartholomew the Great, on the north side of the river, 
not far from Southwark. If Fletcher was married 
in 1 61 2, we may be very sure that his wife was 
not a person of distinction. His verses Upon an 
Honest Man's Fortune, written the next year, give us 
the impression either that he is not married and not 
likely to be, or that he has married one of low estate 
and breeding, has concluded that the matrimonial 
game is not worth the candle, and rather defiantly has 
turned to a better mistress than mortal, who can com- 
pensate him for that which through love he has not 
attained, " Were I in love," he declares, — 

1 Dyce, B. and F., I, Ixxiii. 



WAS FLETCHER MARRIED? 221 

Were I in love, and could that bright Star bring 
Increase to Wealth, Honour, and everything: 
Were she as perfect good, as we can aim. 
The first was so, and yet she lost the Game. 
My Mistriss then be Knowledge and fair Truth ; 
So I enjoy all beauty and all youth. 

We may be sure that when Fletcher wrote this poem 
he had known poverty, sickness, and affliction, but not 
a consolation in wedded happiness : 

Love's but an exhalation to best eyes; 

The matter spent, and then the fool's fire dies. 

Since many of Collier's '' earnests " turn out to be 
" jests," why not the other way round ? That is my 
apology for according this " jest " a moment's whim- 
sical consideration. 

Such is an outline in broad sweep of the activities 
and common relations of our Castor and Pollux, and 
a preliminary sketch of the personality of each. With 
regard to the latter, who is our main concern, the 
vital record is yet more definitely to be discovered 
in the dramatic output distinctively his during the 
years of literary partnership; and to the consideration 
of his share in the joint-plays we may now turn. 



PART TWO 

THE COLLABORATION OF BEAUMONT 
AND FLETCHER 



CHAPTER XVI 

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM; CRITICAL APPARATUS 

MUCH of the confusion which existed in the minds 
of readers and critics during the period follow- 
ing the Restoration concerning the respective pro- 
ductivity of Beaumont and Fletcher is due to accident. 
The quartos (generally unauthorized) of individual 
plays in circulation were, as often as not, wrong in 
their ascriptions of authorship to one, or the other, 
or both of the dramatists; and the folio of 1647, 
which, long after both were dead, first presented what 
purported to be their collected works, lacked title- 
pages to the individual plays, and, save in one instance, 
prefixed no name of author to any play. The ex- 
ception is The Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes- 
Inne and the Inner Temple " written by Francis Beau- 
mont, Gentleman," which had been performed, Feb. 
20, 1612-13, and had appeared in quarto without date 
(but probably 161 3) as '' by Francis Beaumont, Gent." 
In seven instances, Fletcher is indicated in the 1647 
folio by Prologue or Epilogue as author, or author 
revised, and in general correctly; but otherwise the 
thirty- four plays included (not counting the Maske) 
are introduced to the public merely by a general title- 
page as ** written by Francis Beaumont and John 
Fletcher, Gentlemen. Never printed before, And now 

225 



226 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

published by the Authours Original! Copies." That 
the public should have been deceived into accepting 
most of them as the joint-product of the authors is 
not surprising. Though it is not the purpose of this 
discussion to consider plays in which Beaumont v^as 
not concerned, it may be said incidentally that of 
v eleven_of these productions Fletcher was sole author; 
Massinger of perhaps one, and with Fletcher of eight, 
and with Fletcher and others of five more; that in 
several plays four or five other authors had a hand, and 
that in at least five Fletcher had no share. ^ 

Sir Aston Cockayne was, therefore, fully justified, 
when, some time between 1647 and 1658, he thus up- 
braided the publishers of the folio : 

In the large book of Playes you late did print 

In Beaumont's and in Fletcher's name, why in 't 

Did you not justice? Give to each his due? 

For Beaumont of those many writ in few. 

And Massinger in other few ; the Main 

Being sole Issues of sweet Fletcher's brain. 

But how came I (you ask) so much to know? 

Fletcher's chief bosome-friend informed me so. 

r the next impression therefore justice do. 

And print their old ones in one volume too; 

For Beaumont's works and Fletcher's should come forth. 

With all the right belonging to their worth. 

In still another poem, printed in 1662, but written not 
long after 1647, ^^^ addressed to his cousin, Charles 
Cotton, Sir Aston returns to the charge : 

1 See G. C. Macaulay (Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit., VI), and other 
authorities as in footnote toward end of this chapter. 




JOHN FLETCHER 

From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery 

Painter unknown but contemporary 



COLLABORATION WITH FLETCHER 22^ 

I wonder, Cousin, that you would permit 

So great an Injury to Fletcher's wit, 

Your friend and old Companion, that his fame 

Should be divided to another's name. 

If Beaumont had writ those Plays, it had been 

Against his merits a detracting Sin, 

Had they been attributed also to 

Fletcher. They were two wits and friends, and who 

Robs from the one to glorify the other, 

^Of these great memories is a partial Lover. 
Had Beaumont liv'd when this Edition came 
Forth, and beheld his ever living name 
Before Plays that he never writ, how he 
Had frown'd and blush'd at such Impiety! 

' His own Renown no such Addition needs 
To have a Fame sprung from another's deedes: 
And my good friend Old Philip Massinger 
With Fletcher writ in some that we see there. 
But you may blame the Printers : yet you might 
Perhaps have won them to do Fletcher right. 
Would you have took the pains ; for what a foul 
And unexcusable fault it is (that whole 
Volume of plays being almost every one 
After the death of Beaumont writ) that none 
Would certifie them so much! I wish as free 
Y' had told the Printers this, as you did me. 

. . . While they liv'd and writ together, we 
Had Plays exceeded what we hop'd to see. 
But they writ few; for youthful Beaumont soon 
By death eclipsed was at his high noon. 

The statements especially to be noted in these poems 
are, first, that Fletcher is present in most of the work 
published in the earliest folio, that of 1647, Beaumont 



228 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

in but a few plays, Massinger in other few. This 
information Cockayne, who was but eight years of 
age when Beaumont died, and seventeen at Fletcher's 
death, had from Fletcher's chief bosom-friend, and 
it was probably corroborated by Massinger himself, 
with whom Cockayne and his family (as we know 
from other evidence) had long been acquainted. Sec- 
ond, that almost every play in the folio was written 
after Beaumont's death (1616). This information, 
also, Cockayne had from his own cousin who was a 
friend and old companion of Fletcher. This cousin, 
the chief bosom-friend, as I have shown elsewhere, was 
Charles Cotton, the elder, who died in 1658, not the 
younger Charles Cotton (the translator of Montaigne), 
— for he was not born till five years after Fletcher 
died. And, third, that not only is the title of the folio 
" Comedies and Tragedies wTitten by Francis Beau- 
mont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen " a misnomer, but 
that the bulk of their joint-plays, " the old ones " (not 
here included) calls for a volume to itself. A very 
just verdict, indeed, — this of Cockayne, — for (if I 
may again anticipate conclusions later to be reached) 
the only indubitable contributions from Beaumont's 
hand to this folio are his Maske of the Gentleman of 
Grayes Inne and a portion of The Coxcomb e. 

The confusion concerning authorship was redoubled 
by the second folio, which appeared as ''Fifty Com- 
edies and Tragedies. Written by Francis Beaumont 
and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. Published by the Au- 
thors Original Copies (etc.) " in 1679. There are 
fifty-three plays in this volume; the thirty-five of the 
first folio, and eighteen previously printed but not 



COLLABORATION WITH FLETCHER 229 

before gathered together. Beside those in which 
Beaumont had, or could have had, a hand, the eighteen 
include five of Fletcher's authorship, five in which he 
collaborated with others than Beaumont; and one. 
The Coronation, principally, if not entirely, by Shir- 
ley.^ As in the 1647 folio, the only indication of 
respective authorship is to be found in occasional ded- 
ications, prefaces, prologues and epilogues. But, 
while in some half-dozen instances these name Fletcher 
correctly as author, and, in two or three, by implica- 
tion correctly designate him or Beaumont, in other 
cases the indication is wrong or misleading. Where 
" our poets " are vaguely mentioned, or no hint what- 
ever is given, the uncritical reader is led to ascribe the 
play to the joint composition of Beaumont and 
Fletcher. The lists of actors prefixed to several of 
the dramas afford valuable information concerning 
date and, sometimes, authorship to the student of 
stage-history ; but the credulous would carry away the 
impression that Beaumont and Fletcher had collabo- 
rated equally in about forty of the fifty-three plays 
contained in the folio of 1679. 

The uncertainty regarding the respective shares of 
the two authors in the production of this large number 
of dramas and, consequently, regarding the quality 
of the genius of each, commenced even during the 
life of Fletcher who survived his friend by nine years, 
and it has continued in some fashion down to the 
present time. Writing an elegy " on Master Beau- 
mont, presently after his death," ^ that is to say, in 

^ See authorities as in footnote, below. 

2 Included " thirty years " after, among the commendatory 



230 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

1616-17, John Earle, a precocious youth of sixteen, 
at Christ Church, Oxford, is so occupied with lament 
and praise for " the poet so quickly taken off " that 
he not only ascribes to him the whole of Philaster and 
The M aides Tragedy (in both of which it was always 
known that Fletcher had a share) but omits mention 
of Fletcher altogether. So far, however, as the esti- 
mate of the peculiar genius of Beaumont goes, the 
judgment of young Earle has rarely been surpassed. 

Oh, when I read those excellent things of thine, 

Such Strength, such sweetnesse, coucht in every line, 

Such life of Fancy, such high choise of braine, — 

Nought of the Vulgar mint or borrow'd straine, 

Such Passion, such expressions meet my eye, 

Such Wit untainted with obscenity. 

And these so unaffectedly exprest, 

But all in a pure flowing language drest, 

So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon. 

And all so borne within thyself, thine owne, 

I grieve not now that old Menanders veine 

Is ruin'd, to survive in thee againe. 

The succeeding exaltation of his idol above Plautus 
and Aristophanes, nay even Chaucer, is of a generous 
extravagance, but the lad lays his finger on the real 
Beaumont when he calls attention to " those excellent 
things," and to the histrionic quality, the high seri- 
ousness, the " humours " and the perennial vitality 
of Beaumont's contribution to dramatic poetry. 

A year or so later, and still during Fletcher's life- 
time, we find Drummond of Hawthornden confusing 

poems in the folio of 1647 ; but published earlier with Beaumonfs 
Poems, 1640. 



COLLABORATION WITH FLETCHER 231 

in his turn the facts of authorship; for he ''reports 
Jonson as saying that ' Flesher and Beaumont, ten 
years since, hath written The Faithfull Shipheard- 
esse, a tragicomedie well done,' — whereas both Jon- 
son and Beaumont had already addressed lines to 
Fletcher in commendation of his pastoral." ^ By 
1647, ^s Miss Hatcher has shown, the confusion had 
crystallized itself into three distinct opinions, equally 
false, concerning the respective contribution of the 
authors to the plays loosely accredited to their partner- 
ship. These opinions are represented in the com- 
mendatory verses prefixed to the first folio. One was 
that '' they were equal geniuses fused into one by the 
force of perfect congeniality and not to be distin- 
guished from each other in their work," — thus put 
into epigram by Sir George Lisle : 

For still your fancies are so wov'n and knit, 
T was Francis Fletcher or John Beaumont writ ; 

and repeated by Sir John Pettus : 

How Angels (cloyster'd in our humane Cells) 
Maintaine their parley, Beaumont-Fletcher tels : 
Whose strange, unimitable Intercourse 
Transcends all Rules. 

A second, the dominant view in 1647, was that "the 
plays were to be accredited to Fletcher alone, since 
Beaumont was not to be taken into serious account 
in explaining their production." This opinion is ex- 
pressed by Waller, who, referring not only to the 
plays of that folio (in only two of which Beaumont 
1 Miss O. L. Hatcher, John Fletcher, Chicago, 1905. 



232 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

appears) but to others like The M aides Tragedy and 
The Scornful Ladie in which, undoubtedly, Beaumont 
cooperated, says: 

Fletcher, to thee wee do not only owe 
All these good Playes, but those of others, too; . . . 
No Worthies form'd by any Muse but thine, 
Could purchase Robes to make themselves so fine; 

and by Hills, who writes, — " upon the Ever-to-be-ad- 
mired Mr. John Fletcher and his Playes," — 

"Fletcher, the King of Poets! vsuch was he, 
That earn'd all tribute, claim'd all soveraignty." 

The third view was — still to follow Miss Hatcher — 
that *' Fletcher was the genius and creator in the work, 
and Beaumont merely the judicial and regulative 
force." Cartwright in his two poems of 1647, ^s I 
have already pointed out, emphasizes this view : 

Though when all Fletcher writ, and the entire 

Man was indulged unto that sacred fire, 

His thoughts and his thoughts dresse appeared both such 

That 't was his happy fault to do too much ; 

Who therefore wisely did submit each birth 

To knowing Beaumont ere it did come forth; 

Working againe, until he said 't was fit 

And made him the sobriety of his wit; 

Though thus he call'd his Judge into his fame, 

And for that aid allow'd him halfe the name, 

'T is knowne that sometimes he did stand alone. 

That both the Spunge and Pencill were his owne ; 

That himselfe judged himselfe, could singly do, 

And was at last Beaumont and Fletcher too. 



COLLABORATION WITH FLETCHER 233 

A similar view is implied by Dryden, when, in his 
Essay of Dramatick Poesie, 1668, he attributes the 
regularity of their joint-plots to Beaumont's influence; 
and reports that even '' Ben Jonson while he lived 
submitted all his writings to his censure, and 'tis 
thought used his judgment in correcting, if not con- 
triving, all his plots." 

This tradition of Fletcher as creator and Beaumont 
as critic continued for generations, only occasionally 
disturbed,^ in spite of the testimony of Cockayne to 
Fletcher's sole authorship of most of the plays in 
the first folio, to the cooperation of Massinger with 
Fletcher in some, and to the fact that there were 
enough plays not here included, written conjointly 
by Beaumont and Fletcher, to warrant the publication 
of a separate volume, properly ascribed to both. To 
the mistaken attributions of authorship by Dryden, 
Rymer, and others, I make reference in my forthcom- 
ing Essay on The Fellows and Followers of Shake- 
speare, Part Two.2 The succeeding history of opin- 
ion through Langbaine, Collier, Theobald, Sympson 
and Seward, Chalmers, Brydges, The Biographia Dra- 
matica, Cibber, Malone, Darley, Dyce, and the purely 
literary critics from Lamb to Swinburne, has been 
admirably outlined by Miss Hatcher in the first chapter 
of her dissertation on the Dramatic Method of John 
Fletcher. 

With Fleay, in 1874, began the scientific analysis 

1 As by Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatick 
Poets (1691), who acknowledges Cockayne as the only con- 
clusive authority upon the subject. 

^R.E.C., Vol. III. 



234 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

of the problem, based upon metrical tests as derived 
from the investigation of the individual verse of 
Fletcher, Massinger, and Beaumont. His method has 
been elaborated, corrected, and supplemented by addi- 
tional rhetorical and literary tests, on the part of 
various critics, some of whom are mentioned below.^ 
The more detailed studies in metre and style are by 
R. Boyle, G. C. Macaulay, and E. H. Oliphant ; and the 
best brief comparative view of their conclusions as re- 
gards Beaumont's contribution is to be found in R. M. 
Alden's edition of The Knight of the Burning Pestle 
and A King and No King. To the chronology of the 
plays serviceable introductions are afforded by Ma- 
caulay in the list appended to his chapter in the sixth 
volume of the Cambridge History of English Literor- 
tiire, and by A. H. Thorndike in his Influence of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher upon Shakespeare. 

Concerning the authorship of the successive scenes 

1 F. G. Fleay, in New Shakespeare Society Transactions, 1874; 
Shakespeare Manual, 1876; Englische Studien, IX (1866); 
Chronicle of the English Drama, i8gi. R. Boyle, in Engl. Stud., 
V, VII, VIII, IX, X, XVII, XVIII, XXVI, XXXI (1881-IQ02), 
and in N. Shaksp. Soc. Trans., 1886. G. C. Macaulay, Francis 
Beaumont, 1883 ; and in Cambridge History of English Litera- 
ture, VI (1910). A. H. Bullen, article John Fletcher in Diction- 
ary of National Biography, XIX (1889). E. H. Oliphant, in 
Engl. Stud., XIV, XV, XVI (1890-92). A. H. Thorndike, The 
Iniiuence of Beaumont and Fletcher on. Shakespeare, 1901 ; Beau- 
mont and Fletcher's Maid's Tragedy, etc. (Belles Lettres Series), 
1910. R. M. Alden, Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle, 
etc. (Belles Lettres Series), 1910. The introductions in the 
Variorum Edition, 1904, 1905. For a general treatment of the 
subject see, also, A. W. Ward's History of English Dramatic 
Literature, II, 155-248 (1875), II, 642-764 (1899), and F. E. 
Schelling's Elizabethan Drama, II, 184-204, and for bibliography, 
526. For general bibliography, Thorndike and Alden in Belles 
Lettres Series, as above; and Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit., VI, 488-496. 



COLLABORATION WITH FLETCHER 235 

in a few of the plays undoubtedly written in partner- 
ship by Beaumont and Fletcher a consensus of opinion 
has practically been reached. Concerning others, 
especially those in which a third or fourth hand may 
be traced, the difference of opinion is still bewildering. 
This divergence, is due, perhaps, to the proneness of 
the critic to emphasize one or more tests out of relation 
to the rest, or to forget that though individual scenes 
were undertaken now by one, now by the other of the 
colleagues, the play as a whole would be usually 
planned by both, but any individual scene or passage 
revised by either. The tests of external evidence have 
of course been applied by all critics, but as to events 
and dates there is still variety of opinion. Of the 
internal criteria, those based upon the peculiarities of 
each partner in respect of versification have been so 
carefully studied and applied that to repeat the opera- 
tion seems like threshing very ancient straw; but to 
accept the winnowings of others, however careful, is 
unsatisfactory. Tests of rhetorical habit and tectonic 
preference have also been, in general, attempted; but 
not, I think, exhaustively. And, though much has 
been established, and availed of, in analysis, there re- 
mains yet something to desire in the application of the 
more subtle differentiae yielded by such preliminary 
methods of investigation, — what these differentiae 
teach us concerning the temperamental idiosyncrasies 
of each of the partners in scope and method of obser- 
vation, in poetic imagery, in moral and emotional in- 
sight and elevation, intellectual outlook, philosophical 
and religious conviction. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE DELIMITATION OF THE FIELD 

THE plays contained in the first folio of Beaumont 
and Fletcher's Comedies and Tragedies, 1647, 
are The Mad Lover, The Spanish Curate, The Little 
French Larjuyer, The Custome of the Countrey, The 
Noble Gentleman, The Captaine, The Beggers Bush, 
The Coxcomhe, The False One, The Chances, The 
Loyall Subject, The Lawes of Candy, The Lovers 
Progresse, The Island Princesse, The Humorous Lieu^ 
tenant. The Nice Valour, The Maide in the Mill, The 
Prophetesse, The Tragedy of Bonduca, The Sea Voy- 
age, The Double Marriage, The Pilgrim, The Knight 
of Malta, The Womans Prize or The Tamer Tamed, 
Loves Cure, The Honest Mans Fortune, The Queene 
of Corinth, Women Pleas'd, A Wife for a Moneth, 
Wit at Severall Weapons, The Tragedy of Valentinian, 
The Faire Maide of the Inne, Loves Pilgrimage, The 
Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne, and the 
Inner Temple, at the Marriage of the Prince and 
Princesse Palatine of Rhene written by Francis Beau- 
mont, Gentleman, Foure Playes (or Moralle Repre- 
sentations) in One. 

Of these thirty-five, which purport to be printed 
from " the authours originall copies," only one, as I 
have already said, The Maske, had been published be- 
fore. 

236 



DELIMITATION OF THE FIELD 237 

The second folio, entitled Fifty Comedies and Trag- 
edies, i6yg, contains, beside those above mentioned, 
eighteen others, one of which, The Wild-Goose Chase, 
had been published separately and in folio, 1652. The 
remaining seventeen said to be " published from the 
Authors' Original Copies," are printed from the quar- 
tos. They ^vcThe M aides Tragedy, Philaster, ^A King 
, and No King/The Scornful Ladie,The Elder Brother, 
^ Wit without Money, ^ The Faithfull Shepheardesse, 
-Rule a Wife and Haz'e a Wife, '^Monsieur Thomas, 
Rollo,^he Knight of the Burning Pestle,' The^, Nig ht- 
Walker, The Coronation, "Vnpids Revenge, '^The Two 
Noble Kinsmen, ^Thierry and Theodoret, and The 
Woman-Hater. 

In addition to these fifty-three plays, one, The Faith- 
ful Friends, entered on the Stationers' Registers in 
1660, as by Beaumont and Fletcher, was held in man- 
uscript until 1812, when it was purchased by Weber 
from " Mr. John Smith of Furnival's Inn into whose 
possession it came from Mr. Theobald, nephew to the 
editor of Shakespeare," and published. 

According to the broadest possible sweep of modern 
opinion, the presence of Beatimont cannot by any tour 
de force be conjectured in more than twenty-three of 
the fifty- four productions listed above. The twenty- 
three are (exclusive of The Maske) The Woman- 
Hater, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Cupids 
Revenge, The Scornful Ladie, The Maides Tragedy, 
A King and No King, Philaster, Foure Playes in One, 
Loves Cure, The Coxcomhe, The Captaine, Thierry 
and Theodoret, The Faithful Friends, Wit at Severall 
Weapons, Beggers Bush, Loves Pilgrimage, The 



238 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Knight of Malta, The Lawes of Candy, The Nice Val- 
our, The Noble Gentleman, The Faire Maide of the 
Inne, Bonduca, and The Honest Mans Fortune. With 
regard to the last twelve of these plays beginning with 
Thierry and Theodoret there is no convincing proof 
that more than the first four were written before 
February 161 3, when after preparing the Maske for 
the Lady Elizabeth's marriage to the Elector Palatine, 
Beaumont seems (except for his share of The Scornful 
Ladie which I date about 1614) to have withdrawn 
from dramatic activity, — perhaps because of his own 
marriage about that time and withdrawal to the coun- 
try, or because of failing health; and there is no gen- 
erally accepted historical or textual evidence that 
Beaumont had any hand even in these four. Of the 
eight remaining at the end of the list, four may be 
dated before Beaumont's death in 1616: The Honest 
Mans Fortune, which is said on manuscript evidence 
to have been played in the year 161 3, but probably 
later than August 5 ; ^ Bonduca, which Oliphant as- 
serts is an alteration by Fletcher of an old drama of 
Beaumont's, but which other authorities assign to 
Fletcher alone; and, on slighter evidence, Loves Pil- 
grimage, and The Nice Valour. The balance of proof 
with regard to the other four, The Knight of Malta, 
The Lazves of Candy, The Noble Gentleman, and The 
Faire Maide of the Inne, is altogether in favour of 
their composition after Beaumont's death. 

In each of these twelve plays, however, beginning 
with Thierry and ending with The Honest Mans For- 

1 See Fleay, Chron. Eng. Dram., I, 195 ; and W. W. Greg, 
Henslowe Papers, 90. 



DELIMITATION OF THE FIELD 239 

tune, an occasional expert thinks that he finds a speech 
or a scene in Beaumont's style, and concludes that the 
play in its present form is a revision of some early 
effort in which that dramatist had a hand. But where 
one critic surmises Beaumont, another detects Beau- 
mont's imitators; and where one conjectures Fletcher 
and Beaumont conjoined, half a dozen assert Fletcher, 
assisted, or revised by anywhere from one to four 
contemporaries, — Field or Daborne or Massinger, 
Middleton or Rowley, or First and Second Unknown. 
I have examined these plays and the evidence, as 
carefully as I have those which have more claim to 
consideration among the Beaumont possibilities, and 
have applied to them all the tests which I shall pres- 
ently describe; and have come to the conclusion that 
Beaumont had nothing to do with any of the twelve. 

There remain, then, of the twenty- three plays enu- 
merated above as Beaumont-Fletcher possibilities, only 
eleven of which I can, on the basis of external or 
internal evidence, or both, safely say that they were 
composed before Beaumont ceased writing for the 
stage, and that he had, or may have had, a hand in 
writing some of them. These are, in the order of their 
first appearance in print: The Woman-Hater, pub- 
lished without name of author in 1607; The Knight 
of the Burning Pestle, also anonymous, published in 
1613 ; Cupids Revenge, published as Fletcher's in 161 5 ; 
The Scornful Ladie, published in 1616, as Beaumont 
and Fletcher's, just after the death of the former; The 
Maides Tragedy, published, without names of authors, 
in 1 619; A King and No King, published as Beaumont 
and Fletcher's in 1619; Philaster, published as Beau- 



240 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

mont and Fletcher's in 1620; and Foure Playes in 
One, Loves Cure, The Coxcomhe, and The Captaine, 
first published in the 1647 folio, without ascription of 
authorship on the title-page, but as of the " Comedies 
and Tragedies written by Beaumont and Fletcher," in 
general. In the case of Loves Cure the Epilogue men- 
tions *' our Author " ; the Prologue, spoken " at the 
reviving of this play," attributes it to Beaumont and 
Fletcher. As for The Coxcomhe, the Prologue for a 
revival speaks of " the makers that confest it for 
their own." 

It is worthy of notice that three only of these eleven 
possible '* Beaumont-Fletcher " plays were printed 
during Beaumont's lifetime, — The Woman-Hater, 
The Knight of the Burning Pestle and Cupids Re- 
venge, and that on none of them does Beaumont's 
name appear as author. The last indeed was ascribed, 
wrongly, as I shall later show, to Fletcher alone. It 
should also be noted that four other of the plays, be- 
ginning with The Scornful Ladie and ending with 
Philaster, were published before the death of Fletcher 
in 1625; and that while three of them have title-page 
ascriptions to both authors, one, The Maides Tragedy, 
is anonymous. 

To these eleven plays as a residuum I have given 
the preference in the application of tests deemed most 
likely to reveal the relative contribution and genius 
of the authors in partnership. Beside the seven pub- 
lished as stated above during Fletcher's life, two oth- 
ers appeared which I do not include in this residuum, 
— The Faithfidl Shepheardesse and Thierry and 
Theodoret, The former, printed between December 



DELIMITATION OF THE FIELD 241 

22, 1608 and July 20, 1609, is of Fletcher's sole au- 
thorship, and will be employed as one of the clues to 
his early characteristics. The latter, attributed by 
some critics to both authors was published without as- 
cription of authorship in a quarto of 162 1. It does 
not appear in the folio of 1647, but was printed in sec- 
ond quarto as " by John Fletcher " in 1648, and again 
as ''by F. Beaumont and J. Fletcher" in 1649; ^^^ 
was finally gathered up with the Comedies and Trag- 
edies which compose the folio of 1679. Oliphant and 
Thorndike are of opinion that the play is a revision by 
Massinger of an original by Beaumont and Fletcher, 
but I cannot discover in the text evidence sufficient to 
warrant its inclusion in the list of plays worthy to be in- 
vestigated as the possible product of the partnership. 

The eleven Beaumont-Fletcher plays to which the 
criteria of internal evidence may be applied with some 
assurance of success, comprise in their number, for- 
tunately for us, three of which we are informed by 
external evidence, — the contemporary testimony of 
John Earle, dated 161 6- 161 7, — that Beaumont was 
concerned in their composition. These three, Philas- 
ter. The Maides Tragedy, and A King and No King, 
are a positive residuum to which as a model of the 
joint-work of our authors w^e may first, in the effort 
to discriminate their respective functions when working 
in partnership, apply the tests of style derived from a 
study of the plays and poems which each wrote alone. 

With this delimitation of the field of inquiry, we 
are now ready for the consideration of the criteria 
by which the presence of either author may be detected. 
The criteria are primarily of versification; then, sue- 



242 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

cessively and cumulatively, of diction and mental 
habit. Ultimately, and by induction, they are of dra- 
matic technique and creative genius. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE VERSIFICATION OF FLETCHER AND OF BEAUMONT 

I. In Plays Individually Composed. 

THE studies of the most experienced critics into the 
peculiarities of Fletcher's blank verse as dis- 
played in productions of the popular dramatic kind, 
indubitably written by him alone,^ such as Monsieur 
Thomas of the earlier period, ending 1613, The 
Chances, The Loyall Subject, and The Humorous 
Lieutenant of the middle period, ending 1619, and 
Rule a Wife and Have a Wife of his latest period, in- 
dicate that he indulges in an excessive use of double 
endings, sometimes as many as seventy in every hun- 
dred lines, even in triple and quadruple endings ; in an 
abundance of trisyllabic feet; and in a pecuHar reten- 
tion of the old end-stopped line, or final pause, — occa- 
sionally in as many as ninety out of a hundred lines. 
Attention has been directed also to the emphasis 
which he deliberately places upon the extra syllable 
of the blank verse, making it a substantive rather 
than a negligible factor : as in the " brains " and " too " 
of the following: 

Or wander after that they know not where 

To find? or, if found how to enjoy? Are men's brains 

1 Some sixteen plays in all. 

243 



244 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Made nowadays of malt, that their affections 
Are never sober, but, like drunken people 
Founder at every new fame? I do believe, too, 
That men in love are ever drunk, as drunken men 
Are ever loving, — ^ 

and to his fondness for appending words such as 
"first," ''then," ''there," "still," "sir," and even 
" lady " and " gentlemen " to lines which already pos- 
sess their five feet. It has also been remarked that 
he makes but infrequent employment of rhyme. 

Of this metrical st3de examples will be found on 
pages in Chapter XIX, Section 2, below; or on any 
page of Fletcher's Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, as 
for instance the following from Act III, Scene i, 
14-23: 

Altea. My life|, an in|nocent| ! 

Marg. That 's it | I aim [ at, 

15 That 's it I I hope | too; \ then •' I am sure | I rule | 
him; 
For in|nocents | are like | obe|dient chil|dren 
Brought up I under a hard | moth|er-in-law|, a 

cru|el, ^ 

Who be|ing not us'd | to break | fasts and | colla|tions, 
When I they have coarse | bread of|fer'd 'em | are 
^ thank I full, 
20 And take | it for | a f a | vour too | . Are the rooms | 
Made read|y to en|tertain | my friends | ? I long | to 

dance now. 
And I to be wan | ton. • Let | me have | a song. 
Is the great | couch up | the Duke | of Medi | na sent ? 

Here the first half of v. 14 is also the last of the pre- 

1 The Chances, I, i, p. 222 (Dyce) ; but as a rule I use in 
this chapter the text of the Cambridge English Classics. 




JOHN EARLE, BISHOP OF WORCESTER AND SALISBURY 
From the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery 



THE VERSE-TESTS 245 

ceding line; seven out of ten verses have double end- 
ings; one has a triple ending. One, v. 21, has a quad- 
ruple ending ; unless we rearrange by adding " made 
ready " to v. 20, so as to scan : 

And take 't | for a fa|vour too|. Are the rooms | made 

read I y 
To en|tertain | my friends | ? I long | to dance | now. — 

Trisyllabic feet occur in nine; final pauses in nine; 
stress-syllable openings and compensating anapsests in 
two; the feminine caesura (phrasal pause within the 
foot) in two. The pause in v. 15, after two strong 
monosyllables of which the first is stressed, produces 
a jolt, typically Fletcherian. 

Now, these peculiarities of versification are not a 
habit acquired by Fletcher after Beaumont ceased to 
write with him. They are rife not only in the plays 
of his middle and later periods, but in those of the 
earlier period while Beaumont was still at his side. 
As for instance in Monsieur Thomas, entirely Fletch- 
er*s of 1607, or at the latest 161 1. The reader may 
be interested to verify for himself by scanning the 
following passage from Act IV, 2 at which I open 
at random: Launcelot is speaking: 

But to the silent streets we turn'd our furies: 

A sleeping watchman here we stole the shooes from, 

There made a noise, at which he wakes, and follows: 

The streets are durty, takes a Queen-hithe cold, 

Hard cheese, and that choaks him o' Munday next: 

Windows and signs we sent to Erebus ; 

A crew of bawling curs we entertain'd last. 



246 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

When having let the pigs loose in out parishes, 
O, the brave cry we made as high as Algate! 
Down comes a Constable, and the Sow his Sister 
Most traiterously tramples upon Authority: 
There a whole stand of rug gowns rowted mainly, 
And the King's peace put to flight, a purblind pig here 
Runs me his head into the Admirable Lanthorn, — 
Out goes the light and all turns to confusion. 

No one, once acquainted with this style of blank verse, 
with its end-stopped lines, double endings, stress-sylla- 
ble openings, feminine csesurse, trisyllabic feet, jolts, 
and heavy extra syllables, can ever turn it to confusion 
with the verse of any poet before Browning — cer- 
tainly not with that of Beaumont. 

Our materials for a study of Beaumont's individual 
characteristics in the composition of dramatic blank 
verse appear at the first sight to be very scanty; for 
the only example of which we have positive external 
evidence that it was written by Beaumont alone, is 
The Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne and the 
Inner Temple, and unfortunately some critics have ex- 
cluded it from consideration because of its exception- 
ally formal and spectacular character and slight dra- 
matic purpose. Written, however, at the beginning 
of 1613, when the author's metrical manner w^as a 
definitely confirmed habit, it affords, in my opinion, 
the best as well as the most natural approach to the 
investigation of Beaumont's versification. The fol- 
lowing lines may be regarded as typical: 

Is great Jove jealous that I am imploy'd 
On her Love-errands? • She did never yet 



THE VERSE-TESTS 247 

Claspe weak mortality in her white arms, 

As he hath often done: I only come 

To celebrate the long-wish'd Nuptials 

Here | in 01ym|pia, \ which | are now | performed. 

Betwixt two goodly rivers, • that have mixt 

Their gentle, rising waves, and are to grow 

In I to a thou I sand streams | great | as themselves. 

In these nine verses there are no Fletcherian jolts, no 
double endings. In only two lines trisyllabic feet 
occur ; in only two, final pauses. There are stress-syl- 
lable openings in two, with the compensating anapaests ; 
feminine csesurae, in three (dotted) ; and a stress-sylla- 
ble opening for the verse-section after the caesura oc- 
curs in but one, whereas there are at least three such in 
the passage from Monsieur Thomas^ quoted above. 

Nothing could be more pronounced than the differ- 
ence between the metrical style of Fletcher's Monsieur 
Thomas and Rule a Wife and that of Beaumont's 
Maske, as illustrated here. Fletcher abounds in 
double endings, trisyllabic feet, and end-stopped lines, 
and such conversational or lyrical cadences; Beau- 
mont uses them much more sparingly. But while the 
difference between the genuinely dramatic blank verse 
of Fletcher and that of Beaumont is sometimes as pro- 
nounced as this, it would be unscientific to base the 
criterion upon comparison of a mature, conversa- 
tionally dramatic, composition of the former with a 
stiffly rhetorical declamatory composition of the latter. 
For a more suitable comparison we must set Beau- 
mont's Maske side by side with something of Fletch- 
er's written in similar formal and declamatory style, — 
The Faith full Shepheardesse, for instance, a youthful 



248 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

production in the pastoral spirit and form. Of this 
a small part, but sufficient for our purpose, is com- 
posed in blank verse ; and I have cited in the next chap- 
ter with another end in view, the opening soliloquy, — 
to which the reader may turn. But as exemplifying 
certain of Fletcher's metrical peculiarities, in a style of 
verse suitable to be compared with Beaumont's in The 
Maske, the following lines from Act I, i, are per- 
haps even more distinctive. " What greatness," says 
the Shepherdesse, — 

What greatness, ; or what private hidden power, 
^Is I there in me, | to draw submission 

105 From this rude man and beast ? Sure I am mortal, 
The Daughter of a Shepherd ; \ he was mortal, 
And she that bore me mortal : \ prick my hand. 
And it will bleed; a Feaver shakes me, and 
The self-same wind that makes the young Lambs 
shrink 

no Makes me | a-cold ; | my fear says I am mortal. 
Yet I have I heard | (my Mother told it me. 
And now I do believe it), • if I keep 
My Virgin Flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair, 
No Goblin, •' Wood-god, Fairy, Elf, or Fiend, 

115 /\Sa|tyr, or oth|er power that haunts the Groves, 
Shall hurt my body, \ or by vain illusion 

Draw I me to wanlder • after idle fires. 

A ' * 

We have here, in fifteen lines, four double endings, 
nine final pauses (end-stopped verses), four stress- 
syllable openings with compensating anapaests, and 
seven feminine csesurse. In every way this sample 
even of Fletcher's more formal style displays, in its 
salient characteristics, a much closer resemblance in 



THE VERSE-TESTS 249 

kind to the sample of his later blank verse quoted 
from Rule a Wife, above, than to that quoted from 
Beaumont's Maske. 

When we pass from samples to larger sections, and 
compare percentages in the one hundred and thirty- 
one blank verses of The Maske and the first one hun- 
dred and sixty-three of The Shepheardesse, we find 
that in respect of final pauses there is no great differ- 
ence. There are, in the former, more than is usual 
with Beaumont — sixty per cent; in the latter, less 
than is usual with Fletcher — fifty per cent. But in 
other respects Beaumont's Maske reveals peculiarities 
of verse altogether different from those of Fletcher, 
even when he is writing in the declamatory pastoral 
vein. In the one hundred and thirty-one lines of the 
Maske we find but one double ending; whereas in 
the first one hundred and sixty-three blank verses of 
The Shepheardesse we count as many as fourteen. In 
these productions the proportion of feminine csesurae 
is practically uniform — about forty per cent. But 
when we come to examine the more subtle movement 
of the rhythm, we find that in The Maske not more 
than ten per cent of the lines open with the stress- 
syllable, while in the blank verse of the Shepheardesse 
fully thirty-five out of every hundred lines have that 
opening and, consequently, impart the lyrical cadence 
which pervades much of Fletcher's metrical composi- 
tion. In the matter of anapaestic substitutions, and 
of stress-syllable openings for the verse-section after 
the caesura, Beaumont is similarly inelastic; while 
the Fletcher of the Shepheardesse displays a mar- 
vellous freedom. It follows that in the Maske we 



250 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

encounter but rarely the rhetorical pause, within the 
verse, compensating for an absent thesis or arsis ; while 
in the pastoral verse of Fletcher we find frequent in- 
stances of this delicate dramatic as well as metrical 
device, and an occasional jolting caesura. 

We are not limited, however, to the material af- 
forded by the Maske in our attempt to discover Beau- 
mont's metrical characteristics when writing alone. 
The Woman-Hater, included among the plays of 
Beaumont and Fletcher in the folio of 1679, and 
ascribed to both on the title-page of a quarto of 1649, 
is assigned by the Prologue of the first quarto, 1607, 
to a single author — " he that made this play." And, 
though there is no attribution of authorship on the 
title-page of the 1607 quarto, we know from the appli- 
cation of verse-tests and ^ests of diction that, in all 
but three scenes which have evidently been revised,^ 
the author was certainly not Fletcher. An examina- 
tion of the inner structure of the verse of The Wom- 
an-Hatcr, reveals, except in those scenes, precisely the 
peculiarities that distinguish Beaumont's Maske: the 
same in frequency of stress-syllable openings, and of 
anapaestic substitutions and of suppressed syllables 
in metrical scheme. In respect of the more evident 
device of the run-on line The Woman-Hater reaches 
a percentage twice as high as that employed in 
Fletcher's unassisted popular dramas; and in respect 
of the double ending it has a percentage only one- 
quarter as high. We notice also in this play a much 
more frequent employment of rhyme than in any of 

1 For these scenes, and the reasons for asserting that Fletcher 
revised them, see Chapter XXIV below. 



THE VERSE-TESTS 251 

Fletcher's stage plays, and a much larger proportion 
of prose both for dialogue and soliloquy. 

We should have further basis for conclusion con- 
cerning Beaumont's metrical style in independent com- 
position, if we could accept the general assumption 
that he was the author of the Induction to the Foure 
Playes in One, and of the first two plays, The Triumph 
of Honour and The Triumph of Love. But for rea- 
sons, later to be stated, I agree with Oliphant that the 
Induction and Honour are not by Beaumont; and I 
hold that he can not be traced with certainty even in 
the two or three scenes of Love that seem to be 
marked by some of his characteristics. The hand of 
a third writer, Field, is manifest in the non-Fletch- 
erian plays of the series. 

But though we can not draw for our purpose upon 
other plays as his unassisted work, we may derive help 
from the consideration of two at least of Beaumont's 
poems, — poems that have something of a dramatic 
flavour. Though they are in rhyming couplets, they 
display many of the characteristics of the author's 
blank verse. In the Letter to Ben Jonson, which is 
conversational, I count of run-on lines, thirty-eight in 
eighty, almost fifty per cent, as compared with Fletch- 
er's sometimes ten or twenty per cent, in spite of the 
superior elasticity of blank verse; and of stress-sylla- 
ble openings in the same letter twenty-four per cent 
as compared with the thirty-five per cent of Fletcher's 
more highly cadenced rhythm in the Shepheardesse. 
In Beaumont's Elegy on the Countess of Rutland, 
the last forty-four lines afford a fine example of dra- 
matic fervour — the indictment of the physicians. 



252 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Here the run-on lines again abound, almost fifty per 
cent; while the stress-syllable openings are but six- 
teen per cent — much lower than one may find in 
many rhymed portions of the Shepheardesse. With 
regard to all other tests except that of double end- 
ing (which does not apply in this kind of heroic 
couplet), we find that these poems of Beaumont are 
of a metrical style distinguished by the same char- 
acteristics as his blank verse. ^ 

2. In Certain Joint-Plays. 

If we turn now to a second class of material avail- 
able, — the three plays indubitably produced in part- 
nership, — and eliminate the portions written in the 
metrical style of Fletcher, as already ascertained, we 
may safely attribute the remainder to the junior mem- 
ber of the firm ; and so arrive at a final determination 
of his manner in verse composition. 

The three plays, as I have said before, are Philaster, 
The Maides Tragedy and A King and No King. A 
passage, which in the opinion of nearly all critics ^ is 
by all tests distinctively Fletcherian, may be cited 
from the first of these as an example of that which 
we eliminate when we look for Beaumont. It is from 
the beginning of Act V, 4, where the Captain enters : 

"Philaster, brave Philaster!" Let Philas|ter 
Be deeper in request, my ding [a] dongs, 

^The reader may judge for himself by referring to the citation 
from the Letter and the poems to the Countess in Chapters 
VII and XI, above. 

2 Fleay, Boyle, Oliphant, Alden. And even G. C. Macaulay, 
who once claimed the whole play for Beaumont, says now " per- 
haps Fletcher's." 



THE VERSE-TESTS 253 

My paires of deere Indentures, • Kings of Clubs, 
Than | your cold wa|ter-cham|blets ; or | your 

paint|ings 
10 Spit|ted with cop|per. \ Let | not your has|ty 

Silkes, 
Or I your branch'd cloth | of bod | kin, t or | your 

ti|shues, — 
Deare|ly belov'd | of spi|ced cake | and cus|tards, — 
Your Rob|in-hoods, | .Scar | lets and Johns, | ,tye| 

your affec|tions 
In darknesse to your Shops. No, dainty duc|kers, 
15 A^P I ^^^^ your three I -piled spi|rits, ; your | wrought 

va|lors. 
And let | your un|cut col|lers ' make | the King 

feele | 
The measure of your mightinesse, Philas|ter!^ 

Note the double endings, the end-stopped lines, the 
stress-syllable openings, the anapaests, the feminine 
csesurse (dotted), the two omissions of the light sylla- 
ble after the csesural pause and the following accent at 
the beginning of the verse section, and the six feet of 
line 13. 

Of the non-Fletcherian part of Philaster, a typical 
example is the following from Act I, Scene 2, where 
Philaster replies to Arethusa's request that he look 
away from her: 

I can indure it : Turne away my face ? 
I never yet saw enemy that lookt 
So dreadfully but that I thought my selfe 
As great a Basiliske as he ; or spake 
So horrible but that I thought my tongue 

^ Q 1622, slightly modernized. 



254 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Bore thunder underneath, as much as his. 

Nor beast that I could turne from : shall I then 

Beginne to feare sweete sounds? a ladies voyce, 

Whom I doe love? Say, you would have my life; 

Why, I will give it you ; for it is of me 

A thing so loath'd, and unto you that aske 

Of so poore use, that I shall make no price. 

If you intreate, I will unmov'dly heare. 

Or the famous description of Bellario, beginning: 

I have a boy. 
Sent by the gods, I hope to this intent, 
Not yet seen in the court — 

from the same scene. 

Or the King's soliloquy in Act II, Scene 4, containing 

the lines: 

You gods, I see that who unrighteously 
Holds wealth or state from others shall be curst 
In that which meaner men are blest withall: 
Ages to come shall know no male of him 
Left to inherit, and his name shall be 
Blotted from earth. 

The reader w^ill at once be impressed with the regu- 
larity of the masculine ending. Beaumont does not, 
of course, eschew the double ending; but, as Boyle 
has computed, the percentage in this play is but fifteen 
in the non-Fletcherian passages, whereas the percent- 
age in Fletcher's contribution is thirty-five. The prev- 
alence of run-on lines is also noteworthy; and the 
infrequency of the stress-syllable openings, anapaests, 
and feminine csesurae by which Fletcher achieves now 
conversational abruptness, now lyrical lilt. 



THE VERSE-TESTS 255 

In The M aides Tragedy, such soliloquies as that of 
Aspatia in Act V, Scene 4, with its mixture of blank 
verse and rhyme : 

This is my fatal hour; heaven may forgive 
My rash attempt, that causelessly hath laid 
Griefs on me that will never let me rest. 
And put a Woman's heart into my brest. 
It is more honour for you that I die; 
For she that can endure the misery 
That I have on me, and be patient too, 
May live, and laugh at all that you can do — 

are marked by characteristics utterly unlike those of 
Fletcher's dramatic verse. Also unlike Fletcher are 
the scenes which abound in lines of weak and light 
ending, and lines where the lighter syllables of every 
word must be counted to make full measure. Fletcher 
did not write : 

Alas, Amintor, thinkst thou I forbear 
To sleep with thee because I have put on 
A maidens strictness; 

or 

As mine own conscience too sensible; — 

I must live scorned, or be a murderer; — 

That trust out all our reputation. 

Nor did Fletcher write, with any frequency, im- 
proper run-on lines, such as III, 2, 135 (one of his 
collaborator's scenes) : 



256 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Speak yet again, before mine anger grow 
Up beyond throwing down. 

In this play the percentage of run-on lines in 
Fletcher's scenes is about nineteen; in the scenes not 
written by him, almost twenty-seven. Fletcher's 
double endings are over forty per cent ; his collabora- 
tor's barely ten. 

In A King and No King similar Beaumontesque 
characteristics distinguish the major portion of the 
play from the few scenes generally acknowledged to 
be written by Fletcher. In Fletcher's scenes ^ one 
notes the high proportion of stress-syllable open- 
ings, and, consequently, of anapaestic substitutions, 
the subtle omission occasionally of the arsis, and not 
infrequently of the thesis (or light syllable) after 
the pause, and the use of the accented syllable at the 
beginning of the verse-section. While sometimes 
these characteristics appear in the other parts of the 
play, their relative infrequency is a distinctive feature 
of the non-Fletcherian rhythm. A comparison of the 
verse of Fletcher's Act IV, Scene 2, with that of his 
collaborator in Act I, Scene i, well illustrates this 
difference. The recurrence of the feminine caesura 
measures fairly the relative elasticity of the versifiers. 
It regulates two-thirds of Fletcher's lines ; but of his 
collaborator's not quite one half. Fletcher, for in- 
stance, wrote the speech of Tigranes, beginning the 
second scene of Act IV : 

Fool I that I am, | I have | undone | myself, 
^ And I with mine own 1 hand • turn'd I my for I tune 
round, 
iIV, 1,2,3; V, 1,3. 



THE VERSE-TESTS 257 

That was I a fair | one: \ I | have child ]ishly 
Plaid I with my hope | so long, till I have broke | it, 
And now too late I mourn for 't, | O | Spaco|nia, 
Thou hast found | an e|ven way | to thy | revenge | 

now! 
Why I didst thou foil low me, i like I a faint 

shad|ow, 
To wither my desires? But, wretched fool, 
Why I did I plant | thee • 'twixt | the sun | and me, 
^To make | me freeze | thus ? • Why | did I | prefer | 

her 
To I the fair Prin|cess? • O | thou fool, | thou fool, 
Thou family of fools, | a live | like a slave | still 
And in | thee bear | thine own | .hell | and thy tor- | 

ment, — 

where, beside the frequent double endings and end- 
stopped lines, already emphasized in preceding exam- 
ples, w^e observe in the run of thirteen lines, six stress- 
syllable openings with their anapaestic sequences, three 
omissions of the light syllable after the csesural pause 
with the consequent accent at the beginning of the 
verse-section, and no fewer than six feminine csesurge 
(or pauses after an unaccented syllable) of which three 
at least (vv. 2, 5, 10) are exaggerated jolts. 

Beaumont is capable in occasional passages, as, for 
instance, Arbaces' speech beginning Act I, i, 105, of 
lines rippling with as many feminine caesurse. But, 
utterly unlike Fletcher, he employs in the first thir- 
teen of tho'se lines no double endings, no jolts, only 
two stress-syllable openings, only four anapaests, one 
omitted thesis after the cassural pause, four end- 
stopped lines. He is more frequently capable, as in 



258 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

the passage beginning 1. 129, of a sequence without a 
single feminine caesura, but with several feminine (or 
double) endings: 

Tigranes. Is it the course of 

Iberia, to use their prisoners thus? 
Had Fortune throwne my name above Arbaces, 
I should not thus have talkt; for in Armenia 
We hold it base. You should have kept your temper, 
Till you saw home agen, where 't is the fashion 
Perhaps to brag. 

Arbaces. Bee you my witness, Earth, 

Need I to brag ? Doth not this captive prince 
Speake me sufficiently, and all the acts 
That I have wrought upon his suffering land ? 
Should I then boast? Where lies that foot of ground 
Within I his whole | realme \ that | I have | not past 
Fighting and conquering ? ^ 

Up to the twelfth verse with its exceptional jolting 
pause the caesurae are masculine, and fall uncompro- 
misingly at the end of the second and third feet. 

In respect of the internal structure of the verse the 
tests for Beaumont are, then, as I have stated them 
above; in respect of double endings, Boyle and Oli- 
phant have set the percentage in his verse at about 
twenty, and of run-on lines at thirty. Since the met- 
rical characteristics of those parts of Philaster, The 
Maides Tragedy and A King and No King which do 
not bear the impress of Fletcher's versification, are 
well defined and practically uniform; since they are of 
a piece with the metrical manner of The Woman- 
Hater, which is originally, and in general, the work 

1 Quarto of 1619 as given by Alden. 



THE VERSE-TESTS 259 

of one author — Beaumont; and since they are also 
of a piece with the versification of the Maske, which 
is certainly by Beaumont alone, and with that of his 
best poems, — at least one criterion has been established 
by means of which we may ascertain what other plays, 
ascribed to the two writers in common, but on less 
definite evidence, were written in partnership; and 
in these we may have a basis for determining the 
parts contributed by each of the authors. 

Fleay and other scholars have grounded an addi- 
tional criterion upon the fact that the unaided plays of 
Fletcher contain but an insignificant quantity of prose. 
They consequently have ascribed to Beaumont most of 
the prose passages in the joint-plays. But, because in 
his later development Fletcher found that conversa- 
tional blank verse would answer all the purposes of 
prose, it does not follow that in his youthful collabora- 
tion with Beaumont he never wrote prose. We find, 
on the contrary, in the joint-plays that the prose pas- 
sages in scenes otherwise marked by Fletcher's char- 
acteristics of verse, display precisely the rhetorical 
qualities of that verse. The prose of Mardonius in 
Act IV, Scene 2 oi A King and No King, and the 
prose of Act V, Scenes i and 3, which by metrical 
tests are Fletcher's, are precisely the prose of Fletch- 
er's Dion in Act II, Scene 4 and Act V, Scene 3 of 
Philaster, and the tricks of alliteration, triplet, and 
iteration, are those of Fletcher's verse in the same 
scenes. 



CHAPTER XIX 
Fletcher's diction 

THE verse criterion is, however, not of itself a re- 
agent sufficient to precipitate fully the Beaumont 
of the joint-plays. For there still exists the certainty 
that in plotting plays together, each of the collabora- 
tors was influenced by the opinion of the other; and 
the probability that, though one may have undertaken 
sundry scenes or divers characters in a play, the other 
would, in the course of general correction, insert 
lines in the parts written by his collaborator, and 
would convey to his own scenes the distinguishing 
rhythm, ** humour," or diction of a definite character, 
created, or elaborated, by his colleague. It, there- 
fore, follows that the assignment of a whole scene to 
either author on the basis alone of some recurring 
metrical peculiarity is not convincing. In the same 
section, even in the same speech, we may encounter 
insertions which bear the stamp of the revising col- 
league. For instance, the opening of Philaster is 
generally assigned to Beaumont: it has the charac- 
teristics of his prose. But w^ith the entry of the 
King (line 89) we are launched upon a subscene in 
verse which, on the one hand, has a higher percent- 
age of double endings (vi^. 38) than Beaumont ever 
used, but does not fully come up to Fletcher's usage; 

260 



FLETCHER'S DICTION 261 

while on the other hand, it has a higher percentage of 
run-on lines ^ ( 2/15'. 44) than Fletcher ever used. 
The other verse tests leave us similarly in doubt. To 
any one, however, familiar with the diction and char- 
acterization of the two authors the suspicion occurs 
that the scene was written by Beaumont in the first 
instance; and then worked over and considerably 
enlarged by his associate. In the first hundred lines 
of Act II, Scene 4, similar insertions by Fletcher 
occur, and in Act III, 2? 

Such being the case we may expect that an inquiry 
into the rhetorical peculiarities and mental habit, first 
of Fletcher, then of Beaumont, will furnish tests cor- 
rective of the criterion based upon versification. 

I. Fletcher's Diction 
in The FaithfuU Shepheardesse. 

Though rather poetic than dramatic, and composed 
only partly in blank verse. The FaithfuU Shepheardesse 
affords the best approach to a study of Fletcher's 
rhetoric; for, written about 1608 and by Fletcher 
alone, it illustrates his youthful style in the period 
probably shortly before he collaborated with Beau- 
mont in the composition of Philaster. 

The soliloquy of Clorin, with which The FaithfuU 
Shepheardesse opens, runs as follows : 

Hail, holy Earth, whose cold Arms do imbrace 
The truest man that ever fed his flocks 
By the fat plains of fruitful Thessaly! 
Thus I salute thy Grave; thus do I pay 

iln the King's speech, 89-121. 

2 For particulars, see Chapter XXV, § 7, below. 



2(i2. BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

5 My early vows and tribute of mine eyes 
To thy still-loved ashes ; thus I free 
Myself from all insuing heats and fires 
Of love; all sports, delights, and [jolly] games, 
That shepherds hold full dear, thus put I of¥ : 

10 Now no more shall these smooth brows be [be] girt 
With youthful Coronals, and lead the Dance; 
No more the company of fresh fair Maids 
And wanton Shepherds be to me delightful, 
Nor the shrill pleasing sound of merry pipes 

15 Under some shady dell, when the cool wind 
Plays on the leaves ; all be far away, 
Since thou art far away, by whose dear side 
How often have I sat Crowned with fresh flowers 
For summers Queen, whilst every Shepherds boy 

20 Puts on his lusty green, with gaudy hook 
And hanging scrip of finest Cordovan. 
But thou art gone, and these are gone with thee 
And all are dead but thy dear memorie; 
That shall out-live thee, and shall ever spring, 

25 Whilst there are pipes or jolly Shepherds sing. 
And here will I, in honour of thy love, 
Dwell by thy Grave, forgetting all those joys. 
That former times made precious to mine eyes ; 
Only remembring what my youth did gain 

30 In the dark, hidden vertuous use of Herbs : 
That will I practise, and as freely give 
All my endeavours as I gained them free. 
Of all green wounds I know the remedies 
In Men or Cattel, be they stung with Snakes, 

35 Or charmed with powerful words of wicked Art, 
Or be they Love-sick, or through too much heat 
Grown wild or Lunatic, their eyes or ears 
Thickened with misty filme of dulling Rheum; 
These I can Cure, such secret vertue lies 



FLETCHER'S DICTION 263 

40 In herbs applyed by a Virgins hand. 

My meat shall be what these wild woods afford, 
Berries and Chestnuts, Plantanes, on whose Cheeks 
The Sun sits smiling.^ 

This passage, as we have observed in the preceding 
section, does not display in full proportion or un- 
trammeled variety the metrical peculiarities of Fletch- 
er's popular dramatic blank verse. The verse is lyric 
and declamatory: his purely dramatic verse whether 
in the Monsieur Thomas of his earlier period, The 
Chances of the middle period, or A Wife for a Month 
and Rule a Wife of his later years, has the feminine 
endings, redundant syllables, anapaestic substitutions, 
the end-stopped and sometimes fragmentary lines, the 
hurried and spasmodic utterance of conversational 
speech. But, from the rhetorical point of view, this 
soliloquy — in fact, the whole Faithfull Shepheard- 
esse — affords a basis for further discrimination be- 
tween Fletcher and Beaumont in the joint-plays; for 
it displays idiosyncrasies of tone-quality and diction 
which persist, after Beaumont's death, in Fletcher's 
dramas of 1616 to 1625 as they were in 1607-1609: 
sometimes slightly modified, more often exaggerated, 
but in essence the same. 

In Clorin's soliloquy, the reader cannot but notice, 
first, a tendency toward alliteration, the fed and 
flocks, fat and fruitful, fresh and fair, pleasing and 
pipes, — alliteration palpable and somewhat crude, but 
not yet excessive; second, a balanced iteration of 
words, — " be far away, Since thou art far away " 
(11. 16-17), ^^d' five lines further down, "But thou 

lAs given in the Camb. Engl. Classics. 



264 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

art gone and these are gone with thee," and in lines 
31 and 32 " as freely give ... as I gained them 
free " ; and an iteration of phrases, rhetorical assever- 
ations, negatives, alternatives, questions,^ — *' Thus I 
salute thy grave ; thus do I pay," '' thus I free," " thus 
put I off " (lines 4, 6, 9) ; third, a preference for 
iteration in triplets, — ^' No more shall these smooth 
brows," " No more the company," " Nor the shrill 
. . . sound" (lines 10-14), ''Or charmed," ''or 
love-sick," "or through too much heat" (lines 35 
and 36) ; fourth, a fondness for certain sonorous 
words, — "all ensuing heats ... all sports" (lines 
7-8), "all my endeavours ... all green wounds" 
(lines 32-33), and the " alls " of lines 16 and 23 ; fifth, 
a plethora of adjectives, — " holy earth," " cold arms," 
" truest man," " fat plains " — many of them pleonas- 
tic — " misty film," " dulling rheum " — some forty 
nouns buttressed by epithets to twenty standing in their 
own strength; and a plethora of nouns in apposition 
(preferably triplets), — "all sports, delights, and jolly 
games'" (line 8), " Berries and Chestnuts, Plantanes " 
(line 42); sixth, an indulgence in conversational tau- 
tology: for Fletcher is rarely content with a simple 
statement, — he must be forever spinning out the catego- 
ries of a concept; expounding his idea by what the 
rhetoricians call division; enumerating the attributes 
and species painstakingly lest any escape, or verbosely 
as a padding for verse or speech. Of this mannerism 
The Faithfull Shepheardesse affords many instances 
more typical than those contained in these forty-three 
lines; but even here Clorin salutes the grave of her 
lover in a dozen different periphrastic ways. To say 



FLETCHER'S DICTION 265 

that " all are dead but thy dear memorie " is not 
enough; she must specify ''that shall outlive thee." 
To assert that she knows the remedies of " all green 
wounds " does not suffice : she must proceed to the 
enumeration of the wounds; nor to tell us that her 
meat shall be found in the woods: she must rehearse 
the varieties of meat. Her soliloquy in the last 
thirty lines of the scene, not here quoted, is of the 
same quality: it reminds one of a Henslowe list of 
stage properties, or of the auctioneer's catalogue that 
sprawls down Walt Whitman's pages. 

And, last, we notice what has been emphasized by G. 
C. Macaulay and others, that much of this enumeration 
by division is by way of " parentheses hastily thrown 
in, or afterthoughts as they occur to the mind." ^ 
Even in the formal Shepheardesse this characteristic 
lends a quality of naturalness and conversational 
spontaneity to the speech. 

2. In the Later Plays. 

If now we turn to one of Fletcher's plays written 
after Beaumont's death, and without the assistance 
of Massinger or any other, — say, The Humorous 
Lieutenant of about the year 1619, — we find on every 
page and passages like the f ollowing.^ — The King An- 
tigonus upon the entry of his son, Demetrius, ad- 
dresses the ambassadors of threatening powers: 

Do you see this Gent(leman), 
You that bring Thunders in your mouths, and Earth- 
quakes, 

^G. C. Macaulay, Francis Beaumont, p. 45. 
2 Act I, Sc. I, Camb. Engl. Classics, II, p. 286. 



266 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

To shake and totter my designs? Can you imagine 

(You men of poor and common apprehensions) 

While I admit this man, my Son, this nature 

That in one look carries more fire, and fierceness, 

Than all your Masters lives ^ ; dare I admit him, 

Admit him thus, even to my side, my bosom. 

When he is fit to rule, when all men cry him, 

And all hopes hang about his head; thus place him, 

His weapon hatched in bloud; all these attending 

When he shall make their fortunes, all as sudden, 

In any expedition he shall point 'em. 

As arrows from a Tartar's bow, and speeding, 

Dare I do this, and fear an enemy? 

Fear your great master? yours? or yours? 

Here we have blank verse, distinctively Fletcherian 
with its feminine endings and its end-stopped lines. 
But, widely as this differs from the earlier rhythm of 
The Faithfiill Shcpheardesse and its more lyric precipi- 
tancy, the qualities of tone and diction are in the 
later play as in the earlier. The alliterations may 
not be so numerous, and are in general more cun- 
ningly concealed and interwoven, as in lines 2 to 4; 
but the cruder kind still appears as a mannerism, the 
" fire and fierceness," " hopes," " hang," and " head." 
The iterations of word, phrase, and rhetorical ques- 
tion, and of the resonant '' all," the redundant nouns 
in apposition, the tautological enumeration of cate- 
gories, proclaim the unaltered Fletcher. The adjec- 
tives are in this spot pruned, but they are luxuriant 
elsewhere in the play. The triplets, — '' this man, my 
son, this nature," — *' admit," " admit," " admit," find 
compeers on nearly every page: 

1 Crane MS. (1625). 



FLETCHER'S DICTION 267 

Shew where to lead, to lodge, to charge with saf etie, — ^ 

Here's a strange fellow now, and a brave fellow, 
If we may say so of a pocky fellow.^ — 

And now, 't is ev'n too true, I feel a pricking, 
A pricking, a strange pricking.^ — 

With such a sadness on his face, as sorrow. 

Sorrow herself, but poorly imitates. 

Sorrow of sorrows on that heart that caus'd it!* 

In the passages cited above there happen to be, also, 
a few examples of the elocutionary afterthought: 

You come with thunders in your mouth and earth- 
quakes, — 

As arrows from a Tartar's bow, and speeding. — 

To this device, and to the intensive use of the pro- 
nominal " one " Fletcher is as closely wedded as to 
the repetition of " all," — 

They have a hand upon us, 
A heavy and a hard one.^ 

To wear this jewel near thee ; he is a tried one 
And one that . . . will yet stand by thee.® 

Other plays conceded by the critics to Fletcher 
alone, and written in his distinctive blank verse, dis- 
play the same characteristics of style: The Chances 

1 Cambridge, II, p. 290. 

2 Ibid., p. 292. 
^ Ibid., p. 323. 
^Ibid., p. 346. 

^ Loyall Subject, III, i, end. 

6 Hum. Lieut., Cambridge, II, p. 290. 



268 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

of about 1 615, The Loyall Subject of 1618 (like The 
Humorous Lieutenant of the middle period), and 
Rule a Wife and Have a Wife of the last period, 1624. 
I quote at random for him who would apply the tests, 
— first from The Chances,'^ the following of the re- 
peating revolver style: 

Art thou not an Ass ? 
And modest as her blushes ! what a blockhead 
Would e're have popt out such a dry Apologie 
For this dear friend? and to a Gentlewoman, 
A woman of her youth and delicacy ? 
They are arguments to draw them to abhor us. 
An honest moral man ? 't is for a Constable : 
A handsome man, a wholesome man, a tough man, 
A liberal man, a likely man, a man 
Made up by Hercules, unslaked with service: 
The same to night, to morrow night, the next night, 
And so to perpetuity of pleasures. 

Now, from The Loyall Subject ^ — the farewell of 
Archas to his arms and colours. I wish I could quote 
it all as an example of noble noise, enumerative and 
penny-a-line rhetoric: 

Farewell, my Eagle! when thou flew'st, whole Armies 

Have stoopt below thee : at Passage I have seen thee 

Ruffle the Tartars, as they fled thy furie, 

And bang 'em up together, as a Tassel, 

Upon the streach, a flock of fear full Pigeons. 

I yet remember when the Volga curl'd, 

The aged Volga, when he heav'd his head up, 

And rais'd his waters high, to see the ruins. 



ijohn in II, 3, Camb., IV, p. 202. 
21. 3, Camb., Ill, p. 84. 



FLETCHER'S DICTION 269 

The ruines our swords made, the bloudy ruins ; 
Then flew this Bird of honour bravely, Gentlemen; 
But these must be forgotten : so must these too, 
And all that tend to Arms, by me for ever. 

And from Act II, Scene i, pages 101-102, for 
triplets : 

Fight hard, lye hard, feed hard, when they come home, 
sir. . . . 

To be respected, reckon'd well, and honour'd. . . . 

Where be the shouts, the Bells rung out, the peo- 
ple? . . . 

And, for " alls," and triplets : 

And whose are all these glories? why their Princes, 
Their Countries and their Friends. Alas, of all these, 
And all the happy ends they bring, the blessings, 
They only share the labours ! 

Finally, from Rule a Wife, a few instances of the 
iterations, three-fold or multiple, and redundant ex- 
positions. In the first scene ^ Juan describes Leon : 

Ask him a question. 
He blushes like a Girl, and answers little, 
To the point less ; he wears a Sword, a good one, 
And good cloaths too ; he is whole-skin'd, has no 

hurt yet, 
Good promising hopes ; 

and Perez describes the rest of the regiment, 

That swear as valiantly as heart can wish, 
Their mouths charg'd with six oaths at once, and 
whole ones, 

^Camb., Ill, p. 170. 



270 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

That make the drunken Dutch creep into Mole-hills ; . . . 

and he proceeds to Donna Margarita: 

She is fair, and young, and wealthy, 
Infinite wealthy, etc. 

And then to Estefania who has tautologized of her 
chastity, he tautologizes of his harmlessness : ^ 

I am no blaster of a lady's beauty, 

Nor bold intruder on her special favours ; 

1 know how tender reputation is, 

And with what guards it ought to be preserv'd, lady. 

As a fair example of this method of filling a page, 
I recommend the first scene of the third act; and of 
eloquence by rhetorical * division,' Perez's description 
of his room in the next scene : all in terms of three 
times three. 

If now the reader will turn, by way of confirma- 
tion, to The Triumph of Time and The Triumph of 
Death of which the metrical characteristics are ad- 
mittedly Fletcher's, he will find that there, Fletcher, 
before Beaumont's retirement from the partnership, 
is already using in purely dramatic composition the 
rhetorical mannerisms which mark both the lyrically 
designed Shepheardesse of his early years and the 
genuine dramas of the later. 

3. Stock Words, Phrases, and Figures. 

Beside the rhetorical mannerisms classified in the 

preceding paragraphs I might rehearse a long list 

of Fletcher's favourite expressions and figures of 

speech. Of the former Mr. Oliphant ^ has men- 

^Ibid., p. 172. 

2 Engl. Studien, XIV, 65. 



FLETCHER'S DICTION 271 

tioned ' plaguily,' ' claw'd,' ' slubber'd/ * too,' 

* shrewdly,' ' stuck with/ ' it shews,' * dwell round 
about ye/ * for ever/ 'no way/ (for 'not at all'). 
In addition I have noted the reiterated ' thus,' ' mira- 
cle,' 'prodigious' (in the sense of 'ominous') — 
' prodigious star/ ' prodigious meteor ' — ' bugs,' 

* monsters/ and ' scorpions ' ; * torments/ ' diseases/ 
' imposthumes,' ' canker/ * mischiefs/ ' ruins,' 
' blasted/ ' rotten ' ; ' myrmidons ' ; ' monuments ' ( for 

* tombs '), ' marble ' ; * lustre,' ' crystal,' ' jewels,' ' pic- 
ture/ * painting,' ' counterfeit in arras ' ; ' blushes,' 

* palates/ * illusion,' ' abused ' (for ' deceived '), 

* blessed/ ' flung off,' ' cloister'd up,' ' fat earth,' ' tur- 
tle,' ' passion,' * Paradise.' Oliphant assigns to 
Fletcher * pulled on,' but I find that almost as fre- 
quently in Beaumont. * Poison/ * contagious ' and 

* loaden,' also abound in Fletcher, but are sometimes 
used by Beaumont. Fletcher affects alliterative epi- 
thets : ' prince of popinjays,' ' pernicious petticoat 
prince,' ' pretty prince of puppets,' — and antitheses 
such as ' prince of wax,' ' pelting prattling peace.' His 
characters talk much of * silks ' and ' satins,' ' branched 
velvets ' and ' scarlet i clothes. They are said to 
speak in ' riddles ' ; they are threatened with ' ribald 
rhymes ' ; they shall be ' bawled in ballads,' or ' chron- 
icled,' ' cut and chronicled.' 

Another characteristic of Fletcher's diction is his 
preference for the pronoun ye instead of you. This 
was pointed out by Mr. R. B. McKerrow, who in 
his edition of The Spanish Curate ^ notes that in 
the scenes generally attributed, in accordance with 

1 Variorum, B. and F., Vol. II, 1905. 



272 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

other tests, to Fletcher, ye occurs 271 times, while 
in the scenes attributed to Massinger it occurs but 
four. That is to say, for every ye in Fletcher's part 
there are but 0.65 yoitfs; for every ye in Massinger's 
part, 50 yoii's. Mr. W. W. Greg, applying the test 
in his edition of The Eld.er Brother, ^ and counting 
the y' are's as instances of ye, finds that the percentage 
of ye's to yoii's in Fletcher's part is almost three times 
as high as in Massinger's. In a recent article in The 
Nation^ Mr. Paul Elmer More communicates his in- 
dependent obsen^ation of the same mannerism in 
Fletcher. Though he has been anticipated in part, his 
study adds to McKer row's the valuable information 
that Fletcher uses the ye for you in '^ both numbers and 
cases, and in both serious and comic scenes." Mr. 
More's statistics favour the conclusion that the test 
distinguishes Fletcher not only from Massinger, but 
from other collaborators: Middleton, Rowley, Field, 
Jonson, Tourneur. They do not carry conviction re- 
garding Shakespeare, whose habit as Greg and others 
had already announced varies in a perplexing man- 
ner. Nor does Mr. More arrive at any definite result 
concerning the test " when applied to the mixed work 
of Beaumont and Fletcher." For though the high 
percentage of ye's in the third and fourth of the 
Foure Playes confirms the general attribution of those 
' Triumphs ' to Fletcher, the low percentage in the 
first two * Triumphs ' does not justify ** the common 
opinion which attributes them to Beaumont." Their 
author, as I have elsewhere stated, was probably Field. 

1 Variorum, B. and F., Vol. II, 1905. 

2 New York, Nov. 14, 1912. 



FLETCHER'S DICTION 273 

" In the plays which are units," continues Mr. More, 
" such as The Maid's Tragedy, Philaster, A King and 
No King, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and The 
Coxcomb, this mark of Fletcher does not occur at all. 
It should seem that the writing here, at least in its 
final form, was almost entirely Beaumont's." I have 
gone through all the plays which have been ordinarily 
regarded as joint-productions of Beaumont and 
Fletcher, and find that in this surmise Mr. More is 
right. The Knight, to be sure, is Beaumont's alone; 
but with regard to the other four plays mentioned 
above, in which they undoubtedly cooperated, the sug- 
gestion that the writing, at least in its final form, was 
almost entirely Beaumont's, because of the practically 
complete absence of ye's, is justified by the facts. It 
is, also, helpful in the examination of plays not men- 
tioned in this list. It has, in connection with other 
considerations, assisted me to the conclusion that 
Fletcher went over two or three scenes of The Worn- 
a^i-Hater, stamping them with his ye's after Beau- 
mont had finished it as a whole ; and it has confirmed 
me in the belief that The Scornful Ladie was one of 
the latest joint-plays, only partly revised by Beau- 
mont, — and that, not long before his death, Fletch- 
er's preference for ye is a distinctive mannerism. His 
usage varies from the employment of one-third as 
many ye^s to that of twice as many ye's as yoit's; 
whereas Beaumont rarely uses a ye. Even more 
distinctive is Fletcher's use of y'are, and of ye in the 
objective case. The latter, Beaumont does not toler- 
ate. 

For figurative purposes Fletcher finds material 



274 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

most frequently in the phenomena of winter and 



storm : ' frosts, nipping frosts,' ' nipping winds,' 
' hail,' ' cakes of ice,' * icicles,' * thaw,' ' tempests,' 
* thunders,' * billows,' ' mariners ' and * storm-tossed 
barks,' * wild overflows ' of waters in stream or tor- 
rent; in the phenomena of heat and light: * suns,' the 
'icy moon,' the 'Dog-star' or the 'Dog,' the 'Sirian 
star,' the ' cold Bear ' and ' raging Lion,' ' Aetna,' ' fire 
and flames'; of trees: root and branch, foliage and 
fruit; of the oak and clinging vine; of the rose or 
blossom and the ' destroying canker ' ; of fever and 
ague; of youth and desire, and of Death ' beating lar- 
ums to the blood,' of our days that are ' marches to 
the grave,' and of our lives ' tedious tales soon for- 
gotten.' I have elsewhere called attention to the 
numerous variations which he plays upon the ' story 
of a woman.' His ' monuments ' are in frequent 
requisition and, by preference, they ' sweat ' ; men pur- 
sued by widows fear to be ' buried alive in another 
man's cold monument.' Other common images are 
' rock him to another world,' ' bestride a billow,' 
' plough up the sea.' He indulges in extended mytho- 
logical tropes as of the ' Carthage queen ' and 
Ariadne; is especially attracted by Adonis, Hylas 
(whom he may have got either from Theocritus or 
the Marquis D'Urfe's Astrsean character), and Her- 
cules ; and, in general, he levies more freely than Beau- 
mont on commonplace classical material. In his un- 
assisted dramas his fondness for personification seems 
to grow : many pages are thick with capitalized ab- 
stractions ; and the poetry, then, is usually limited to 
the capitalization. The curious reader will find most 



FLETCHER'S DICTION 275 

of Fletcher's predilections in image-making clustered 
in three or four typical passages of the later and un- 
assisted plays, such as Alphonso's raving in A Wife 
for a Month, IV, 4; and in passages, undoubtedly of 
his verse and diction, in plays written conjointly with 
Beaumont, such as that of Spaconia's outburst in 
King and No King, IV, 2, 45-62. 

Fletcher abounds in optatives : * Would Gods thou 
hadst been so blest! ' ' Would there were any safety 
in thy sex ! ' and the like. He is also given to rhetori- 
cal interrogations and elaborate exclamations; more 
so than Beaumont. He affects the lighter kind of 
oath, the appeal to something sacred, in attestation — 
* Witness Heaven ! ' In entreaty — * High Heaven, de- 
fend us ! ' Or in mere ejaculation — ' Equal Heavens ! ' 
He varies his asseverations so that they appear less 
bluntly profane: ' By my life! ' * By those lights, I 
vow ! ' — or more appropriate to the emergency : ' By 
all holy in Heaven and Earth ! ' He swears occa- 
sionally ' By the Gods,' but not so frequently as Beau- 
mont, for there was a puritanical reaction after 
Beaumont's death. In the early joint-plays he affects 
particularly * all the gods,' ' By all those gods, you 
swore by ! ' * By more than all the gods ! ' In his im- 
precations he is even more sulphurous than Beaumont : 
' Hell bless you for it ! ' * Hell take me then ! ' ' Thou 
all-sin, all-hell, and last all-devils ! ' 

In summary let us say of Fletcher's diction, that its 
vocabulary is repetitious; its sentence-structure, loose, 
cumulative, trailing: that its larger movement is, in 
general, dramatic, conversational, abrupt, rather than 
lyrical, declamatory, reflective. He writes for the 



2^6 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

plot — forward : not from the character — outward. 
When he bestows a lyrical or descriptive touch upon 
the narrative it is always incidental to conversation or 
stage business. When he indulges in a classical remi- 
niscence he permits himself to embroider and bedizen ; 
but usually his ribbons (from a scantly furnished, 
much-rummaged wardrobe) are carelessly pinned on. 
While capable, especially in tragedy, of occasional 
long speeches, he prefers the brief interchange of ut- 
terance, the rapid fire and spasm of dialogue. 



CHAPTER XX 
Fletcher's mental habit 

FROM the study of Fletcher's unaided plays we 
arrive at a still further criterion for the deter- 
mination of his share in the joint-plays, — his stock 
of ideas concerning life, his view of the spectacle, 
and his emotional attitude. His early pastoral com- 
edy The Faithful! Shepheardesse might be dismissed 
from consideration as a conventionalized literary 
treatment of conditions remote from actual experience, 
were it not that other dramatic exponents of shep- 
herds and shepherdesses — Jonson, for instance, and 
Milton — have succeeded in imbuing the pastoral 
species with qualities distinctly vital ; the former, with 
rustic reality and genuine tenderness; the latter, with 
profound moral significance. The FaithfuU Shep- 
heardesse, on the other hand, with all its beauty of 
artistic form is devoid of reality, pathos, and sub- 
limity. The author has no ideas worthy of the name 
and, in spite of his singing praises of chastity, he has 
his hand to his mouth where between fyttes there blos- 
soms a superb smile. He has in art no depth of convic- 
tion ; consequently, no philosophy of life to offer. The 
FaithfuU Shepheardesse strikes the intellectual keynote 
of all Fletcher's unaided work. He is a playwright 
of marvellous skill, a lyrist of facile verse and fancy, 
but a poet of indifference — of no ethical insight or 

277 



2^'^ BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

outlook when he is purveying for the public. His 
tragedies, for instance V alentinian and Bonduca (the 
two scenes of the latter that may not be his are 
negligible), abound in sudden fatal passions and noble 
diction. They involve moral conduct, to be sure, patri- 
otism, loyalty, chivalry, military prowess, insane lust 
and vengeance, but they lack deep-seated and delib- 
erate motive of action, and they fail of that inevita- 
bility of spiritual conflict which is requisite to a tragic 
effect. The heroes of these, and of his tragicomedies 
and romantic dramas, such as A Wife for a Month, 
The Loyall Subject, The Humorous Lieutenant, The 
Pilgrim, The Island Princesse, may be fearless and 
blameless, but their courage and virtue are of habit 
rather than of moral exigency. Their loyalty is fre- 
quently unreasonable and absurdly exaggerated. One 
or two of his virtuous heroines are at once charming 
and real; but as a rule with Fletcher — the more 
virtuous, the more nebulous. His villains have no 
redeeming touch of humanity: their doom moves us 
not; nor does their sleight-of-hand repentance con- 
vince us. The atmosphere is histrionic. There is 
scorn of Fate and Fortune, much talk of death and 
the grave: and we "go out like tedious tales for- 
gotten " ; or we don't, — just as may suit the stage 
hangings, the brilliance of the footlights, and the 
sentimental uptake. There is, in short, in his un- 
assisted serious dramas little real pathos; little of 
the grandeur and sudden imaginative splendour which, 
we shall see, characterized Beaumont; none of Beau- 
mont's earnestness and philosophical spontaneity and 
profundity. 



FLETCHER'S MENTAL HABIT 279 

Like the tragicomic plays, Fletcher's lighter com- 
edies, The Chances, The Mad Lover, The Wild-Goose 
Chase, Women Pleased, escape a moral catastrophe by 
walking round the issue. The heroes are amorous 
gallants, irresponsible adventurers, adroit scapegraces, 
devil-may-care rapier-tongued egoists and opportu- 
nists. The heroines are " not made for cloisters " ; 
when they are not already as conscienceless as the 
heroes, in performance or desire, they are airy lasses, 
resourceful in love, seeming- virtuous but suspiciously 
well-informed of the tarnished side of the shield, — 
always witty. Fletcher can portray the innocence and 
constancy of woman; but he rarely takes the pains. 
" To be as many creatures as a woman " is for him a 
comfortable jibe. The charm of romantic character 
and subtly thickening complication did not much at- 
tract him. 

He sets over in contrast the violent, insane, tragic, 
or pathetic with the ludicrous or grotesque; he in- 
dulges a careless, loose-jointed, adventitious humour. 
That he could, on occasion, avail himself of the laugh- 
ter of burlesque is abundantly proved by the utterances 
of his Valentine in Wit without Money, the devices of 
the inimitable Maria in The Tamer Tained, and of the 
Humorous Lieutenant. But for that comic irony of 
issues by which the wilful or pretentious or deluded, — 
foes or fools of convention and born prey of ridicule, — ■ 
are satisfactorily readjusted to society, he prefers to 
substitute hilarity, ribaldry, the clash of wits, the 
battledore and shuttlecock of trick, intrigue, of shift- 
ing group and kaleidoscopic situation. The idiosyn- 
crasies of the crowd delight him; but the more actual. 



28o BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

the more boisterous and bestial. His populace feeds 
upon " opinions, errors, dreams.'* 

His facile verse and limpid dialogue flash with 
fancy. The gaiety of gilded youth ripples down the 
page ; but the more clever, the more irrelevant the swirl- 
ing jest, — and, to say the least, the more indelicate. 
Life is a bagatelle ; its most strenuous interest — love ; 
and love is volatile as it is sudden. The attitude of 
sex toward sex is as obvious to the level-headed ani- 
mal, who is cynic in brain and hedonist in blood, as its 
significance is supreme: it is that of the man-or- 
woman hunt; the outcome, a jocosity, more or less, 
— whether of fornication or cuckoldry, or of tame, 
old-fashioned, matrimonial monochrome. 

These characteristics of the Fletcherian habit mark 
all the author's independent plays from The Faithfull 
Shepheardesse of 1607 or 1608 to Rule a Wife of 
1624. The man himself, I think, was better than the 
dramaturgic artist catering to the public market. For 
his personal, nay noble, ideals, let the reader turn to the 
poem appended to The Honest Mans Fortune, and 
judge. The characteristics sketched above are of the 
maker of a mimic world. Since I have elsewhere 
discussed them in full,^ and the marvellous success that 
the dramaturge achieved in Shakespeare's Globe, this 
brief enumeration must suffice. Fletcher's mental 
habit affords an additional criterion for the determi- 
nation of authorship in the unquestioned Beaumont- 
Fletcher plays, and in the analysis of plays in which 
the collaboration of the poets has been conjectured 
but not so fully attested. 

1 The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare (Part Two) in 
Representative English Comedies, Vol. III. 



CHAPTER XXI 
Beaumont's diction 

FROM a consideration of Beaumont's work in his 
poems, in his Maske and Woman-Hater, and such 
portions of the three unquestioned Beaumont-Fletcher 
plays as are marked by his idiosyncrasies of versifica- 
tion, we may arrive at conclusions concerning his 
diction, rhetorical and poetic. 

I. Rhetorical Peculiarities in General. 

Beaumont's frequent use in prose of the enclitics 
* do ' and * did ' has been observed by students of his 
style. The same peculiarity marks his verse, and oc- 
casionally enables the reader to determine the author- 
ship of passages where the metrical tests are inconclu- 
sive. His rhetoric is sometimes of the repetitive 
order, but, as Oliphant has indicated, rather for ends 
of word-play and irony than for mere expansion as 
with Fletcher. Such, for instance, is the ironical repe- 
tition of a speaker's words by his interlocutor. I note 
also a tendency to purely dramatic quotation, not com- 
mon in Fletcher's writing, — e. g., in The Woman- 
Hater: '' Lisping cry ' Good Sir ! ' and he's thine 
own " ; or " Every one that does not know, cries * What 
nobleman is that?'" — and in A King and No King 
" That hand was never wont to draw a sword, But 

281 



282 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

it cried * Dead ' to something." This test alone, if 
we had not others of rhetoric and metre, would go 
far to deciding the respective contributions of our au- 
thors to the personality of Captain Bessus in the latter 
play. The Bessus of the first three acts, undoubtedly 
Beaumont's, is resonant with such cries and conversa- 
tional citations; the Bessus of the last two, in a role 
almost as extensive, uses the device but once. Beau- 
mont sometimes indulges in enumerative sentences; 
but the enumerations are generally in prose and (it 
will be recalled that he was a member of the Inner 
Temple) of a mock-legal character, not mere redun- 
dancies of detail such as we find in Fletcher. Among 
other peculiarities of expression is his frequent em- 
ployment of ' ha ' as an interrogative interjection. 

2. Stock Words, Phrases, and Figures. 

Beaumont is especially fond of the following words 
and phrasal variations : — The * basilisk ' with his 
* deaddoing eye,' * venom,' * infect,' * infection ' and 
' infectious,' ' corrupt,' ' leprosy,' ' vild,' * crosses ' (for 
'misfortunes'), 'crossed' and 'crossly matched,' 
'perplex,' 'distracted,' 'starts' (for 'surprises' and 
' fitful changes '), ' miseries,' ' griefs,' * garlands,' * cut,' 
'shoot,' 'dissemble,' 'loathed,' 'salve' (as noun and 
verb), 'acquaint' and 'acquaintance,' to 'article,' 
' pull,' * piece,' ' frail ' and ' frailty,' ' mortal ' and 
' mortality,' ' fate ' and ' destiny,' to * blot ' from 
earth or memory, 'after-ages,' 'instruments' (for 
'servants'). Of his repeated use of 'hills,' 'caves,' 
' mines,' ' seas,' ' thunder,' ' beast,' ' bull,' we shall 



HIS DICTION 283 

have further exemplification when we consider his 
figures of speech. 

He is forever playing phrasal variations upon the 
words ' piece,' and ' little.' The former is a manner- 
ism of the day, already availed of by Shakespeare in 
Lear, * O ruined piece of nature,' and frequently in 
Antony and Cleopatra, and later repeated in the 
Tempest and Winter's Tale. So with Beaumont, Are- 
thusa is a ' poor piece of earth ' ; ' every maid in love 
will have a piece ' of Philaster; Oriana is a ' precious 
piece of sly damnation,' * that pleasing piece of frailty 
we call woman.' Or the word is used literally for 
* limb ' : — ' I '11 love those pieces you have cut away.' 
— Beaumont, I may say in passing, delights in cutting 
bodies ' into motes,' and sending ' limbs through the 
land.' — * Little ' he affects, making it pathetic and even 
more diminutive in conjunction with ' that ' : Euphra- 
sia would * keep that little piece I hold of life.' ' It 
is my fate,' proclaims Amintor, 

To bear and bow beneath a thousand griefs 
To keep that little credit with the world; 

and so, * that little passion,' * that little training,' ' these 
little wounds,' ad libitum. Somewhat akin is the 
poet's use of * kind ' : * a kind of love in her to me ' ; 
'a kind of healthful joy.' His heroines good and 
bad are given to introspection : they have * acquaint- 
ance ' with themselves. * After you were gone,' says 
Bellario, ' I grew acquainted with my heart ' ; and 
Bacha in Cupid's Revenge in a scene undoubtedly of 
Beaumont's verse * loathes ' herself and is * become 



284 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

another woman; one, methinks, with whom I want 
acquaintance.' 

While Beaumont makes occasional use of simile, his 
figures of poetry, or tropes, are generally of the more 
creative kind, — metaphor, personification, metonymy, 
— and these are very often heightened into that figure 
of logical artifice known as hyperbole. His compari- 
sons deal in a striking degree with elemental phenom- 
ena: hills, caves, stones, rocks, seas, winds, flames, 
thunder, cold, ice, snow ; or they are reminiscential of 
country life. In each play some hero declaims of 

* the only difference betwixt man and beast, my rea- 
son ' ; and inevitably enlarges upon the * nature un- 
confined ' of beasts, and illustrates by custom and 
passion of ram, goat, heifer, or bull — especially bull. 
When the bull of the pasture does not suffice, the bull 
of Phalaris charges in. But Beaumont prefers na- 
ture : his images are sweet with April and violets and 
dew and morning-light, or fields of standing corn 

* moved with a stiff gale' — their heads bowing 'all 
one way.' From the manufacture of books he bor- 
rows two metaphors, * printing ' and ' blotting,' and 
plies them with effective variety : Philaster * prints ' 
wounds upon Bellario; Bellario 'printed' her 

* thoughts in lawn ' ; Amintor will ' print a thousand 
wounds ' upon Evadne's flesh ; and Nature wronged 
Panthea * To print continual conquest on her cheeks 
And make no man worthy for her to take.' With 
similar frequency recur ' blotted from earth,' * blotted 
from memory,' ' this third kiss blots it out.' 

The younger poet personifies abstractions as fre- 
quently as Fletcher, but in a more poetic way. He 



HIS DICTION 285 

vitalizes grief and guilt and memory with figurative 
verbs — ' shoot,' ' grow/ * cut.' * I feel a grief shoot 
suddenly through all my veins ' cries Amintor ; 
and again ' Thine eyes shoot guilt into me.' 
' I feel a sin growing upon my blood ' shudders 
Arbaces. Philaster will * cut off falsehood while it 
springs ' ; Amintor welcomes the hand that should 

* cut ' him from his sorrows ; and Evadne confesses 
that her sin is * tougher than the hand of Time can 
cut from man's remembrance.' Similar metaphorical 
constructions abound, such as ' pluck me back from 
my entrance into mirth,' in one of Leucippus' 
speeches in Beaumont's part of Cupid's Revenge; and 
in a speech of Melantius * I did a deed that plucked 
five years from time ' in The Maides Tragedy. Per- 
sonified grief and sorrow are frequently in the plural 
with Beaumont : — * Nothing but a multitude of walk- 
ing griefs.' It is a mistake to suppose, as some do, 
that passages written in Beaumont's metrical style are 
not by him if they abound in personification. Hunger, 
black Despair, Pride, Wantonness, figure in his verse 
in The Woman-Hater; Chance, Death, and Fortune in 
The Knight; Death, Victory, and Friendship, in The 
Maides Tragedy; Destiny, Falsehood, Mortality, Na- 
ture in Philaster; and so on. 

No dramatist since the day of Kyd and Marlowe 
has more frequent or violent resort to hyperbole. His 
heroes call on * seas to quench the fires ' they ^ feel,' 
and * snows to quench their rising flames ' ; they will 

* drink off seas ' and * yet have unquenched fires left * 
in their breasts ; they * wade through seas of sins ' ; 
they * set hills on hills ' and ^ scale them all, and 



286 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

from the utmost top fall ' on the necks of foes, ' like 
thunder from a cloud ' ; or they * discourse to all the 
underworld the worth ' of those they love. ' From his 
iron den ' they '11 ' waken Death, and hurl him ' on 
lascivious kings. Arethusa's heart is * mines of ada- 
mant to all the world beside,' but to her lover * a last- 
ing mine of joy ' ; her breath * sweet as Arabian winds 
when fruits are ripe ' ; her breasts * two liquid ivory 
balls.' Evadne will sooner * find out the beds of 
snakes,' and ' with her youthful blood warm their 
cold flesh ' than accede to Amintor's desires. * The 
least w^ord ' that Panthea speaks ' is worth a life.' 
' The child, this present hour brought forth to see 
the world, has not a soul more pure ' than Oriana's. 
In one of Beaumont's verse-scenes of The Coxcomhe, 
Ricardo, reinstated in his Viola's esteem, would have 
some woman * take an everlasting pen ' into her hand, 
* and grave in paper more lasting than the marble 
monuments ' the matchless virtues of wom.en to pos- 
terities. And as for Bellario's worth to Philaster, — 

'T is not the treasure of all Kings in one, 
The wealth of Tagus, nor the rocks of pearl 
That pave the court of Neptune, can weigh down 
That virtue. 

Echoes not of Kyd and Marlowe only, but of 
Shakespeare from Romeo to Hamlet and Macbeth, 
reverberate in the magniloquent hyperbole of Beau- 
mont. 

Beaumont has more ejaculations than Fletcher, but 
fewer optatives. He is chary of rhetorical questions, 
and his exclamations run by preference into some fig- 



HIS DICTION 287 

tired hyperbole. He appeals less frequently than 
Fletcher to ' all the gods,' but very often to ' the gods/ 
* good gods,' * ye gods,' ' some god.' He refers, in 
conformity with his deterministic view of life, with 
particular preference to the * just gods,' the ' powers 
that must be just,' the * powers above,' ' ye better 
powers,' * Heaven and the powers divine,' * you heav- 
enly powers,' the ' powers that rule us ' ; and all these 
he uses in attestation. An oath distinctive of him 
is ' By my vexed soul ! ' In his hyperboles. Hell and 
devils play their part; but not in oath so frequently 
as with Fletcher. 

3. Lines of Inevitable Poetry. 

Similarly noticeable is Beaumont's faculty for ' sim- 
ple poetic phrasing.' The elevated passion, the sudden 
glory, — and the large utterance of brief sentence and 
single verse, have been remarked by critics from his 
contemporary, John Earle, who wrote in commenda- 
tion: 

Such strength, such sweetness couched in every line. 
Such life of fancy, such high choice of brain, 

down to G. C. Macaulay, Her ford, and Alden of the 
present day. No reader, even the most cursory, can 
fail to be impressed by the completeness of that one 
line (in his lament for Elizabeth Sidney), 

Sorrow can make a verse without a Muse, — 

by the 'unassuming beauty' of Viola's loneliness (in 
his subplot of The Coxconibe), 



288 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

All things have cast me from 'em but the earth. 
The evening comes, and every little flower 
Droops now as well as I ; — 

by the sublimity of those few words to the repentant 
lover. 

All the forgiveness I can make you is to love you ; — 

by the superb simplicity of Bellario's scorn of life, in 
Philaster, 

'T is but a piece of childhood thrown away, 

and the finality of her definition of death (which, as 
if in premonition of his too sudden fate, is character- 
istic of Beaumont), — 

'T is less than to be born ; a lasting sleep ; 

A quiet resting from all jealousy, 

A thing we all pursue ; I know, besides, 

It is but giving over of a game 

That must be lost ; — 

by the pathetic irony of Aspatia's farewell to love in 
The M aides Tragedy, 

So with my prayers I leave you, and must try 
Some yet-unpractis'd way to grieve and die ; 

and the heroism (in Cupid's Revenge, the final scene, 
undoubtedly of Beaumont's verse) of Urania's con- 
fession to Leucippus, 

I would not let you know till I was dying; 

For you could not love me, my mother was so naught ; 

by Panthea's cry of horror, in A King and No King, 



LINES OF INEVITABLE POETRY 289 
I feel a sin growing upon my blood; 

and by those flashes of incomparable verity that in- 
tensify the gloom of The M aides Tragedy: Amintor's 

Those have most power to hurt us, that we love ; 
We lay our sleeping lives within their arms; 

and after Evadne's death, 

My soul grows weary of her house, and I 
All over am a trouble to myself ; — 

by the wounded Aspatia's 

I shall sure live, Amintor, I am well ; 

A kind of healthful joy wanders within me; 

and her parting whisper, 

Give me thy hand ; mine eyes grope up and down. 
And cannot find thee. 

This is Nature sobbing into verse: the unadorned 
poetry of the human heartbreak. Where other than 
in Shakespeare do v^^e find among the Jacobean poets 
such verse? 

That a style of this kind should be rich in apothegm 
is not surprising. Instances rare in wisdom and 
phrasal conciseness are to be encountered on every 
other page of Beaumont. 

It may, in short, be said of this dramatist's rhetor- 
ical and poetic diction, that, while the vocabulary may 
not be more varied, it is more intimate, musical, and 
reverberant than Fletcher's; that the periods, though 



2go BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

sometimes appropriately syncopated and parenthetic- 
ally broken, as in dramatic conversation, are, in rhap- 
sodical and descriptive passages, botl^ complex and 
balanced of structure, — pregnant of ideas labouring 
for expression rather than enumerative ; that they echo 
Shakespeare's grandeur of phrase, with its involution, 
crowding of illustration and fresh insistent thought, 
in a degree utterly foreign to the rhetoric of Fletcher ; 
and that his brief sentences are marked by a direct 
and final resplendence and simplicity. 

In the larger movements of composition the purely 
poetic quality predominates over the narrative, dra- 
matic or conversational. This characteristic is espe- 
cially noticeable in declamatory speeches and solilo- 
quies; sometimes idyllic as in Philaster's description 
of Bellario, — " I found him sitting by a fountain's 
side," — or in the well-known '' Oh that I had been 
nourished in these woods with milk of goats and 
acorns " ; often operatic, as in Aspatia's farewells to 
Amintor and to love; always lyrical, imaginatively 
surcharged. Beaumont's figures of rhetoric when not 
hyperbolic, are picturesquely natural ; his poetic tropes 
are creative, vitalizing. His speakers are self-revela- 
tory: expressive of temperament, emotion, reflection. 
Their utterances are frequently descriptive, pictur- 
esquely loitering, rather than, by way of dialogue, 
framed to further the action alone. And yet, when 
they will, their conversation is spontaneous, frag- 
mentary, and abrupt, intensifying the dramatic situ- 
ation; not simply, as with Fletcher, by giving oppor- 
tunity for stage-business, but by differencing the 
motive that underlies the action. 



CHAPTER XXII 
Beaumont's mental habit 

FROM passages in the indubitable metrical manner 
and rhetorical style of Beaumont we pass to a 
still further test by which to determine his share in 
doubtful passages — I mean his stock of ideas. Critics 
have long been familiar with the determinism of his 
philosophy of life. His Arethusa in Philaster ex- 
presses it in a nutshell : 

If destiny (to whom we dare not say, 
Why didst thou this?) have not decreed it so, 
In lasting leaves (whose smallest characters 
Was never altered yet), this match shall break. — 

We are ignorant of the ' crosses of our births.' Na- 
ture ' loves not to be questioned, why she did this or 
that, but has her ends, and knows she does well.' 
*' But thou," cries the poet, — 

But thou hadst, ere thou knew'st the use of tears, 
Sorrow laid up against thou cam'st to years. 

'Tis the gods, ' the gods, that make us so.' They 
would not have their ' dooms withstood, whose holy 
wisdoms make our passions the way unto their justice.' 
And * out of justice we must challenge nothing.' The 
gods reward, the gods punish : * I am a man and dare 

291 



292 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

not quarrel with divinity . . . and you shall see me 
bear my crosses like a man.' It is the ' will of 
Heaven ' ; * a decreed instant cuts of^ every life, for 
which to mourn is to repine.' ^ 

Similarly familiar is Beaumont's recurrent doc- 
trine of the divinity of kings. '' In that sacred word," 
says his Amintor of The M aides Tragedy, — 

In that sacred word 
* The King,' there lies a terror : what frail man 
Dares lift his hand against it ? Let the gods 
Speak to him when they please ; till when let us 
Suffer and wait. 

And again, to the monarch who has wronged him, 

There is 
Divinity about you, that strikes dead 
My rising passions; as you are my King 
I fall before you, and present my sword 
To cut mine own flesh, if it be your will. 

Of * the breath of kings ' Beaumont's fancy con- 
structs ever new terrors : it is * like the breath of 
gods ' ; it may blow men ' about the world.' But when 
a king is guilty, though he may boast that his breath 
Vcan still the w^inds, uncloud the sun, charm down the 
swelling floods, and stop the floods of heaven,' some 
honest man is always to be found to say ' No ; nor ' 
can thy * breath smell sweet itself if once the lungs 
be but corrupted.' Though the gods place kings 
' above the rest, to be served, flattered, and adored,' 
kings may not ' article with the gods ' — 

1 Elegy on the Countess of Rutland. 



HIS MENTAL HABIT 293 

On lustful kings 
Unlooked-for sudden deaths from Heaven are sent; 
But curs'd is he that is their instrument. 

Of ' this most perfect creature, this image of his 
Maker, weli-squared man ' Beaumont philosophizes 
much. Again and again he reminds us that ' the only 
difference betwixt man and beast is reason.' In the 
moment of guilty passion his Arbaces of ^ King and 
No King cries : 

Accursed man ! 
Thou bought'st thy reason at too dear a rate, 
For thou hast all thy actions bounded in 
With curious rules, when every beast is free." 

And, in the moment of jealousy, Philaster laments, 

Oh, that, like beasts, we could not grieve ourselves 
With that we see not ! 

Beaumont knows of no natural felicity or liberty more 
to be envied than that of the beast; and of no oppro- 
brium more vile than that which likens man to lustful 
beast, or * worse than savage beast/ 

He is impressed with the frailty of mankind and the 
brevity of life: 'Frail man' and 'transitory man' 
fell readily from his lips who was to die so young. 
He emphasizes the objective quality of evil: " Good 
gods, tempt not a frail man!" prays Philaster; and 
Arbaces struggling against temptation : " What art 
thou, that dost creep into my breast; And dar'st not 
see my face ? " Once temptation has taken root, it 
grows insidiously : Panthea " feels a sin growing 
upon her blood " ; and Arbaces moralizes 



294 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

There is a method in man's wickedness 
It grows up by degrees. 

It is natural, therefore, that Beaumont should fre- 
quently fall back upon ' conscience ' and its ' sensibil- 
ity.' And upon the efficacy of repentance. So Leu- 
cippus in Beaumont's portion of Cupid's Revenge, 
prays the gods to hold him back, — " Lest I add sins to 
sins, till no repentance will cure me." Arbaces finds 
repentance. Evadne knows that it is ' the best sacri- 
fice.' 

From this consciousness of uneasy greatness and 
frail mortality the poet seeks refuge in descriptions of 
pastoral life. His pictures of idyllic beauty and sim- 
plicity are too well-know^n to warrant repetition here : 
Bellario weaving garlands by the fountain's side ; Phi- 
laster's rhapsody in the woods ; Valerio's " Come, 
pretty soul, we now are near our home " to Viola in the 
Coxcomhe, and Viola's " what true contented happiness 
dwells here, More than in cities! " The same concep- 
tion marks as Beaumont's the shrewdly humorous 
conversation in prose between the citizens' wives in 
A King and No King, beginning — 

Lord, how fine the fields be! What sweet living 't is in 
the country ! — 

Ay, poor souls, God help 'em, they live as contentedly as 
one of us. 

Through the fourth act of Philaster, and wherever else 
Beaumont portrays the countryside or country men 
and women, there blows the fresh breeze of the Charn- 
wood forest in his native Leicestershire. 



HIS MENTAL HABIT 295 

But his most poetic themes are of the friendship of 
man for man, and of the ' whiteness ' of women's in- 
nocence, the unselfishness of their love, their forgiving- 
ness, and the reverence due from men who so little un- 
derstand them. *' And were you not my King," pro- 
tests the blunt Mardonius to his hasty lord, " I should 
have chose you out to love above the rest." " I have 
not one friend in the court but thou," says Prince Leu- 
cippus; and his devoted follower can only stammer 
" You know I love you but too well." In that fine 
summing up of Melantius to Amintor, one seems to 
hear Beaumont himself: 

The name of friend is more than family 
Or all the world besides. 

With woman's purity his darkest pages are starred. 
She is * innocent as morning light,' ' more innocent 
than sleep,' ' as white as Innocence herself.' * Armed 
with innocence ' a tender spotless maid ' may walk safe 
among beasts.' Her * prayers are pure,' and she is 
' fair and virtuous still to ages." ^ His fairest hero- 
ines are philosophers of * the truth of maids and per- 
juries of men.' " All the men I meet are harsh and 
rude " says Aspatia, 

And have a subtilty in everything 
Which love could never know; but we fond women 
Harbour the easiest and the smoothest thoughts, 
And think all shall go so. It is unjust 

1 1 cannot understand how so careful a scholar as Professor 
Schelling {Engl. Lit. during Lifetime of Shakesp., 207) can attri- 
bute to him, from the hopelessly uncritical collection of Blaik- 
lock, the poem entitled The Indifferent, and argue therefrom his 
*' cynicism " concerning the constancy of woman. 



296 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 
That men and women should be match' d together. 

His Viola of the Coxcombe continues the conten- 
tion: 

Woman, they say, was only made of man 
Methinks 't is strange they should be so unlike; 
It may be, all the best was cut away 
To make the woman, and the naught was left 
Behind with him. 

And the philosophy of Beaumont's love-lorn maid- 
ens she sums up in her conclusion: 

Scholars affirm the world 's upheld by love ; 
But I believe women maintain all this, 
For there 's no love in men. 

Deserted by her lover, she finds * how valiant and 
how 'fraid at once, Love makes a virgin ' ; and, sought 
again by him repentant, she epitomizes the hearts of 
all Bellarios, Arethusas, Pantheas, Uranias : 

I will set no penance 
To gain the great forgiveness you desire, 
But to come hither, and take me and it . . . 
For God's sake, urge your faults no more, but mend ! 
All the forgiveness I can make you, is 
To love you : which I will do, and desire 
Nothing but love again; which if I have not. 
Yet I will love you still. 

All man can do in return for such long-suffering mercy 
is to revere : " How rude are all men that take the 
name of civil to ourselves " murmurs the reformed 
Ricardo ; and then — 



HIS MENTAL HABIT 297 

I do kneel because it is 
An action very fit and reverent, 
In presence of so pure a creature. 

So kneels Arbaces; and so, in spirit, Philaster and 
Amintor. 

Prayer is for Beaumont a very present aid. Of 
his women especially the * vows ' and ' oblations ' are 
a poetic incense continually ascending. And closely 
akin to the prayerful innocence of tender maids is 
the pathos of their ' childhood thrown away.' Even 
his whimsical Oriana of The Woman-Hater can aver: 

The child this present hour brought forth 
To see the world has not a soul more pure, 
More white, more virgin that I have. 

The bitterest experiences of humanity are sprung 
from misapprehension, — " They have most power to 
hurt us that we love," — or from jealousy, slander, un- 
warranted violence, unmerited pain. And for these 
the only solace is in death. About this truth Beau- 
mont weaves a shroud of unsullied beauty, a poetry 
that has rarely been surpassed. In nearly all that he 
has left us the thought recurs; but nowhere better 
expressed than in those lines, already quoted in full 
from Philaster, where Bellario *' knows what 'tis to 
die ... a lasting sleep; a quiet resting from all jeal- 
ousy." His Arethusa repeats the theme; but with a 
wistful incertitude : 

I shall have peace in death 
Yet tell me this : there will be no slanders, 
No jealousy in the other world; no ill there? 



298 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

" No," replies her unjustly suspicious lover. — And 
she : — " Show me, then, the way ! " No kinder mercy 
to the tempted, misconceived heir of mortality has 
been vouchsafed than to * suffer him to find his quiet 
grave in peace.' So think Panthea and Arbaces; and 
so his Urania and Leucippus find. And so the poet 
closes that rare elegy to his beloved Countess of Rut- 
land : 

I will not hurt the peace which she should have, 
By longer looking in her quiet grave. 

But still more powerful in its blessing than * sleep ' 
and the ' peace ' of the ' quiet grave,' and more fearful 
in its bane than the penalties of hell, — one reality 
persists — the award of ' after-ages.' Bellario would 
not reveal what she has learned, to make her life ' last 
ages.' Philaster's highest praise for Arethusa is 
" Thou art fair and virtuous still to ages." " Kill 
me," says Amintor to Evadne, — 

Kill me; all true lovers, that shall live 
In after-ages crossed in their desires. 
Shall bless thy memory. 

Ricardo of the Coxcomhe would have some woman 
' grave in paper ' their ' matchless virtues to poster- 
ities.' Even the mock-romantic Jasper in the Knight 
(which I am sure is all Beaumont) will try his sweet- 
heart's love ' that the world and memory may sing 
to after-times her constancy.' As to evil, it meets 
its punishment both in heredity and in the verdict 
of generations yet to come. '' I see," soliloquizes the 
usurping King in a passage already quoted from Philas- 
ter: 



HIS MENTAL HABIT 299 

You gods, I see that who unrighteously 

Holds wealth or state from others shall be cursed 

In that which meaner men are blest withal : 

Ages to come shall know no male of him 

Left to inherit, and his name shall be 

Blotted from earth ; if he have any child 

It shall be crossly matched. 

" Show me the way," cries Arbaces to his supposed 
mother, and thinking of heredity, " to the inheritance 
I have by thee, which is a spacious world Of impious 
acts/' And Amintor warns Evadne : " Let it not 
rise up for thy shame and mine To after-ages. . . . 
We will adopt us sons; The virtue shall inherit and 
not blood." " May all ages," prays the lascivious 
Bacha in Cupid's Revenge, " May all ages," — 

That shall succeed curse you as I do! and 
If it be possible, I ask it, Heaven, 
That your base issues may be ever monstrous, 
That must for shame of nature and succession, 
Be drowned like dogs! 

So, passim, in Beaumont — * lasting to ages in the 
memory of this damned act ' ; * a great example of 
their justice to all ensuing ages.' 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE AUTHORSHIP OF THREE DISPUTED PLAYS 

WITH the tests which have thus been described 
we are equipped for an examination of the plays 
written before 1616, which have, in these latter days, 
been with some show of evidence regarded as the 
joint-production of the " two wits and friends." ^ 

iTo employ in this process of separation the characteristics 
of Fletcher's later dramatic technique as a criterion does not 
appear to me permissible. For these, however, the reader may 
consult Miss Hatcher's John Fletcher, A Study on Dramatic 
Method, and sections 15 and 16 of my essay on The Fellows and 
Followers of Shakespeare, Part Two, Rep. Eng. Com., Vol. Ill, 
now in press. The technique is more likely to change than the 
versification, the style, the mental habit. Its later characteristics 
may, some of them, have been derived from the association with 
Beaumont; or they may be of Fletcher's maturer developmi,ent 
under different influences and conditions. It is fair to cite them 
as corroborative evidence in the process of separation, only when 
they are in continuance of Fletcher's earlier idiosyncrasy. I 
have, also, refrained from complicating the present discussion by 
analysis of the style of Massinger, for which see Fleay, N. S. S. 
Trans., 1874, Shakesp. Manual, 1876, Engl. Studien, 1885-1886, 
and Chron. Eng. Dram., 1891 ; Boyle, Engl. Studien, 1881-1887, 
and N. S. S. Trans., 1886; Macaulay, Francis Beaumont, 1883; 
Oliphant, Engl. Studien, 1890-1892; Thorndike, Infl. of B. and F., 
1901 ; and section 16 of my essay mentioned above. There is 
no proof of Massinger's dramatic activity before July 1613, 
nor of his cooperation with Fletcher until after that date, i. e., 
after Beaumont's virtual cessation. He may have revised some 
of Beaumont's lines and scenes ; but Beaumont's style is too well 
defined to be confused with that of Massinger or of any other 
reviser; or of an imitator, such as Field. 

300 



THREE DISPUTED PLAYS 301 

While attempting to separate the composition of one 
author from that of the other, we may determine 
the dramatic pecuHarities of each during the course 
of the partnership, and obtain a fairly definite basis 
for an historical and literary appreciation of the plays, 
individually considered. 

I. — Of the Foure Playes, or M or all Representations, 
in One (first published as by Beaumont and Fletcher 
in the folio of 1647, but without indication of first 
performance or of acting company), the last two, 
The Triumph of Death and The Triumph of Time, 
are, according to the verse tests, undoubtedly Fletcher's 
and have been assigned to him by all critics. The 
Triumph of Death is studded with alliterations and 
with repetitions of the effective word: 

Oh I could curse 
And crucify myself for childish doting 
Upon a face that feeds not with fresh figures 
Every fresh hour; 

and with triplets: 

What new body 
And new face must I make me, with new manners; 

and with the resonant " all " : 

Make her all thy heaven, 
And all thy joy, for she is all thy happiness ; 

and with Fletcher's favourite words and his nouns in 
apposition, rhetorical questions, afterthoughts, verbal 
enumerations, and turgid exposition. The same may 
be said of The Triumph of Time. As there is less 



302 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

of the redundant epithet than in The Faithfull Shep- 
heardesse (1609), but more than in Philaster (before 
July 12, 1610), I am of the opinion that Fletcher's 
contribution to the Triumphs falls chronologically be- 
tween those plays. As Fletcher matures he prunes 
his adjectives. 

The rest of these M or all Representations display 
neither the verse nor the rhetoric of Fletcher. On 
the basis of verse-tests Boyle assigns them to Beau- 
mont. Macaulay says, " probably," — and adds the 
Induction. But Oliphant, taking into consideration 
also the rhetorical and dramatic qualities, gives the 
Induction and The Triumph of Honour to a third 
author, Nathaniel Field, and only The Triumph of 
Love to Beaumont. As to the Induction and The 
Triumph of Honour I agree with Oliphant. They 
are full of polysyllabic Latinisms such as Field uses 
in his Woman is a Weather-cocke (entered for pub- 
lication November 23, 161 1) and Beaumont never 
uses : ' to participate affairs/ * torturous engine,' etc. ; 
and they are marked by simpler Fieldian expressions 
* wale,' ' gyv'd,' ' blown man,' * miskill,' ' vane,' ' lub- 
bers,' * urned,' and a score of others not found any- 
where in Beaumont's undoubted writings. A few 
words, like ' basilisk ' and ' loathed ' suggest Beau- 
mont, as does the verse ; but this may be explained by 
vogue or imitation. Field was two or three years 
younger than Beaumont, and had played as a boy 
actor in one or more of the early Beaumont and 
Fletcher productions. His Woman is a Weather- 
cocke and his Amends for Ladies indicate the influ- 
ence of Beaumont in matters of comic invention, 



THREE DISPUTED PLAYS 303 

poetic hyperbole, burlesque and pathos, as well as in 
metrical style. The Honour is a somewhat bombastic, 
puerile, magic-show written in manifest imitation of 
Beaumont's verse and rhetoric. 

As to The Triumph of Love, I go further than Oli- 
phant. I assign at least half of it, viz., scenes i, 2, 
and 6, on the basis of diction, to Field. In scenes 
3, 4, and 5, I find some trace of Beaumont's favourite 
expressions, of his thoughts of destiny and death and 
woman's tenderness, his poetic spontaneity, 'his sen- 
sational dramatic surprises; but I think these are an 
echo. The rural scene lacks his exquisite simplicity; 
and some of the words are not of his vocabulary. 
One is sorry to strike from the list of Beaumont's 
creations the pathetic and almost impressive figure of 
Violante. If it was originally Beaumont's, it is of 
his earlier work revamped by Field; if it is Field's, it 
is an echo simulating the voice, but missing the reahty, 
of Beaumont's Aspatia, Bellario, Urania. This criti- 
cism holds trye of both the Triumphs, Love and 
Honour. 

The commonly accepted date, 1608, for the compo- 
sition of the Foiire Playes in One is derived from 
Fleay, who mistakenly quotes a reference in the 1619 
quarto of The Yorkshire Tragedy to the Foure Playes 
as if it were of the 1608 quarto where the reference 
does not appear.^ While Fletcher may have written 
the first draft of his contribution before the middle of 
1 6 10, it is evident from Field's Address To the Reader 
in the first quarto of the Woman is a Weather-cocke 

1 See Thorndike, Inil. of B. and F., p. 85, for discussion and 
authorities. 



304 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

(entered S. R., November 23, 161 1), that Field's con- 
tribution was made after November 23, 161 1. In 
that Address he makes it plain that this is his first 
dramatic effort : " I have been vexed with vile plays 
myself a great while, hearing many; now I thought 
to be even with some, and they should hear mine too." 
We have already noticed ^ that Field had not written 
even his Weather-cocke, still less anything in collabo- 
ration with Fletcher, at the time of the publication of 
The Faithful! Shepheardesse (between January and 
July, 1609) ; for in his complimentary poem for the 
quarto of that " Pastorall," Field acknowledges his un- 
known name and his Muse in swaddling clouts, and 
timidly confesses his ambition to write something like 
The Shepheardesse, *' including a Morallitie, Sweete 
and profitable." That Field's contribution to the 
Foure Playes was not made before the date of the first 
performance of The Weather-cocke by the Revels' 
Children at Whitefriars, i. e., January 4, 1610 to 
Christmas 1610-11 (when its presentation before the 
King at Whitehall probably took place), further ap- 
pears from his dedication To Any Woman that hath 
been no Weather-cocke (quarto, 161 1) in which he 
alludes not to The Triumph of Honour, or of Love, 
but to Amends for Ladies, as his " next play," then 
on the stocks, and, he thought, soon to be printed.^ 
The evidence, external and internal, amply presented 
by Oliphant, Thorndike, and others, but with a view 
to conclusions different from mine as to date and 
authorship, confirms me in the belief that Fletcher's 

1 Chapter VI. 

2 It was not printed till 1618; but had been acted long before. 



THREE DISPUTED PLAYS 305 

Time and Death, though written at least two years 
earlier, were not gathered up with Field's Induction, 
Honour, and Love, into the Foure Playes in One until 
about 1612; and that the series was performed at 
Whitefriars by Field's company of the Queen's Revels' 
Children, shortly after they had first acted Cupid's 
Revenge at the same theatre. 

2. — Of the remaining ten plays in which, according 
to the historical evidence adduced by various critics, 
Beaumont could have collaborated, at least two furnish 
no material that can be of service for the estimation 
of his qualities. If Love's Cure was written as early 
as the date of certain references in the story, viz., 
1 605-1 609, it is so overlaid by later alteration that 
whether, as the textual experts guess, it be Beaumont's 
revised by Massinger, or Fletcher's revised by Mas- 
singer and others, or Massinger and Middleton's, or 
Beaumont's with the assistance of Fletcher and revised 
by Massinger, Beaumont for us is indeterminate. 
Fleay, Oliphant, and others trace him in a few prose 
scenes, and in two or three of verse.^ But where the 
rhetorical and dramatic manner occasionally suggest 
him, or the metre has somewhat of his stamp, words 
abound that I find in no work of his undisputed compo- 
sition. The servant, Lazarillo, like him of Beaumont's 
Woman-Hater, is a glutton, but he does not speak 
Beaumont's language. The scenes ascribed to Beau- 
mont reek with an excremental and sexual vulgarity 
to which Beaumont never condescended, unless for 
brief space, and when absolutely necessary for charac- 

111,1, 2; III, I, 3,5; V, 3. 



3o6 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

terization. And there is little, indeed, that bespeaks 
Fletcher. Love's Cure was first attributed to Beau- 
mont and Fletcher at a " reviving of the play " after 
they were both dead; and it was not printed till 1647. 
It is not unlikely, as G. C. Macaulay holds, that the 
play was written by Massinger, in or after 1622. 

3. — As to that comedy of prostitution, with occa- 
sional essays on the special charms of cuckoldry, The 
Captmne (acted in 161 3, maybe as early as 161 1, 
and by the King's Company) there is no convincing 
external proof of Beaumont's authorship. It is, on 
the contrary, assigned to Fletcher by one of his 
younger contemporaries. Hills, whose attributions of 
such authorship are frequently correct ; and its accent 
throughout is more clearly that of Fletcher than of 
any other dramatist. The critics are agreed that it is 
not wholly his, however; and G. C. Macaulay in es- 
pecial conjectures the presence of Massinger. The 
verse and prose of a few scenes ^ do not preclude the 
possibility of Beaumont's cooperation; but I find in 
them no vestige of his faith in sweet innocence; and 
in only one, — the awful episode (IV, 5), in which 
the Father seeks his wanton daughter in a house of 
shame and would kill her, — his imaginative elevation 
or his dramatic creativity. 

iIV, s; V, 2, 4, S. 



CHAPTER XXIV 



THE WOMAN-HATER, AND THE KNIGHT 



if 



FOUR. — The Woman-Hater was entered in the 
Stationers' Registers, May 20, 1607, and pub- 
lished in quarto (twice, with but slight variation) the 
same year " as lately acted by the Children of Paules." 
Of the date of composition, probably the spring of 
1607, I have written in Chapter VI, above. There is 
no indication of authorship in either quarto; but the 
Prologue assigns it to a single author — " he that made 
this play." The quarto of 1648 prints it as " by J. 
Fletcher Gent"; that of 1649, ^s by Beaumont and 
Fletcher. The Prologue of 1649, however, written 
by D'Avenant for an undated revival of the play and 
addressed to the Ladies, definitely ascribes the author- 
ship to one " poet," who " to the stars your sex did 
raise ; for which, full twenty years he wore the bays." 
The " twenty years " can apply only to Fletcher. 

In the lines which follow, D'Avenant has been sup- 
posed to credit the same author with the whole of 
The Maides Tragedy, Philaster, and A King and No 
King as well : 

'T was he reducM Evadne from her scorn, 
And taught the sad Aspatia how to mourn; 
Gave Arethusa's love a glad relief ; 
And made Panthea elegant in grief. 
307 



3o8 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

We now know, from the application of metrical and 
rhetorical tests, that but a small part of each of the 
plays here alluded to was written by Fletcher. If 
D'Avenant has attributed to Fletcher in these cases 
plays of which the larger part was written by Beau- 
mont, he was but consistent in error when he ascribed 
to Fletcher The Woman-Hater, in which there is very 
little that betrays resemblance to Fletcher's style. If, 
on the other hand, D'Avenant in the verses quoted 
above intended to attribute to Fletcher merely indi- 
vidual scenes of The M aides Tragedy, etc., he must 
have had a knowledge of the respective authorship 
of the dramatists hardly to be reconciled with the pal- 
pable mistake of assigning The Woman-Hater to 
Fletcher. For, by an odd coincidence, he has indi- 
cated in the first and second verses two ^ of the five 
scenes of The M aides Tragedy, and in the third, two ^ 
of the five scenes of Philaster which our modern criti- 
cism has proved to be Fletcher's. The reference in 
the fourth line is more vague ; but it has the merit of 
indicating the only scene of A King and No King^ in 
which, according to our critical tests, Fletcher has 
contributed to the characterization of Panthea. With 
regard to The Woman-Hater, it would appear that 
D'Avenant was carelessly following the mistaken 
ascription of authorship on the title-page of the quarto 
of 1648. 

Fleay, Boyle, Macaulay, and Ward, with but slight 
hesitation, pronounce The Woman-Hater to be an in- 
dependent production of Beaumont, written while he 
was under the influence of Ben Jonson; but as I shall 
iIV, i; and II, 2. ay, 3, 4. s ly, i. 



AUTHOR OF "THE WOMAN-HATER"? 309 

presently show, Fletcher has revised a few scenes. 
Oliphant feels inclined to- join the critics mentioned 
above, but cannot blind himself ** to the presence of 
Fletcher in a couple of scenes." One of these is 
HI, i.^ In the quartos this scene is divided 
into two. By the ye test the first half -scene, running 
to Enter Duke, Etc., in which Oriana tempts Gon- 
darino, would be Fletcher's (15 ye's to 9 you's^ ; but 
the percentage of double endings is too low, and that 
of run-on lines too high for him. I think that he is 
revising Beaumont's original sketch. The second 
half-scene and the rest of the act are, by the ye test 
and all other criteria, Beaumont's. The metrical style 
of the act as a whole is Beaumont's; so also the en- 
clitic ' do's ' and ' did's,' the Beaumontesque * basilisk,' 
' dissemble,' the mock-heroic prayers, and mock-legal 
nicety of enumeration, the racy ironic prose, and the 
burlesque Shakespearian echoes — " That pleasing 
piece of frailty that we call woman," etc. The other 
passage doubtfully assigned to Fletcher, by Oliphant 

— forty lines following Enter Ladies in V, 5 (Dyce) 

— more closely resembles his manner of verse, but is 
not markedly of his rhetorical stamp. But by the ye 
test (24 yes to 39 you's) the whole of that scene, open- 
ing Enter Arigo and Oriana is Fletcher's, or Fletcher's 
revision of Beaumont. So, also, by the ye test is 
another scene not before ascribed to Fletcher, IV, 2 
(27 ye's to 25 y Oil's), as far as Enter Oriana and her 
Waiting -wo man. In this and the other ye scenes, the 
ye frequently occurs in the objective, — which is abso- 

1 Between Oriana sits down and exit Oriana, as in Dyce, Vol, 
I, pp. 43-48. 



3IO BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

lute Fletcher. The rest of this scene, constituting two 
in the quartos, is pure Beaumont. — The play is, so 
far as we can determine, Beaumont's earliest attempt 
at dramatic production. Fletcher touched it up, and 
his revision shows in the scenes mentioned above ; that 
is to say, in about sixteen out of the seventy pages as 
printed in the Cambridge English Classics. 

The manifestly exaggerated torments of Gondarino 
" who will be a scourge to all females in his life," 
the amorous affectation of Oriana, the " stratagems 
and ambuscadoes " of the hungry courtier in his pur- 
suit of " the chaste virgin-head " of a fish, the zealous 
stupidity of the intelligencers are, as we have already 
noted, of the humours school ; and the work is that of 
a beginner. But the " humours " are flavoured with 
Beaumont's humanity; the mirth is his, genuine and 
rollicking. The satire is concrete; and the play as a 
whole, a promising precursor of the purple-flowered 
prickly pear, next to be considered, — also undoubt- 
edly Beaumont's. 

5. — Evidence, both external and internal, points to 
the production of The Knight of the Burning Pestle 
between July 10, 1607 and some time in March 1608. 
Since the first quarto (161 3) is anonymous, our earli- 
est indication of authorship is that of the title-pages 
of the second and third (1635), which ascribe the play 
to Beaumont and Fletcher; and our next, the Cockpit 
list of 1639 where it is included in a sequence of five 
plays in which one or both had a hand. 

The dedication of the first quarto speaks in one 
place of the " parents " of the play, and in others 



AUTHORSHIP OF "THE KNIGHT" 311 

of its " father " ; and the address prefixed to the sec- 
ond quarto speaks of the " author." Critics when 
relying upon verse-tests think that they trace the 
hand of Fletcher in several scenes.^ But in those 
scenes, even when the double-endings might indicate 
Fletcher, the frequency of rhymes, masculine and 
feminine, is altogether above his usage; the number 
of end-stopped lines is ordinarily below it; and the 
diction, save in one or two brief passages,^ is his 
neither in vocabulary nor rhetorical device. The 
verse is singularly free from alliteration; and the 
prose, in which over a third of the play is written, 
displays that characteristic of Fletcher in only one 
speech,^ and, there, with ludicrous intent. Though, 
on the other hand, the verse is in many respects differ- 
ent from that which Beaumont employed in his more 
stereotyped drama, it displays in several passages his 
acknowledged peculiarity in conjimction with a dic- 
tion and manner of thought undoubtedly his. The 
prose is generally of a piece with that of his other 
comic writing, as in The Woman-Hater more espe- 
cially; and the scenes of low life and the conversation 
are coloured by his rhetoric as we know them in Phil- 
aster, A King and No King, and The Coxcomb e. Of 
the portrayal of humours, mock-heroic and burlesque, 
the same statements hold true. The verse of Jasper's 
soliloquy : ^ 

II, i; 1,2; II, 2; IT, 3; HI, i; IV, 4. 

2 E. g., the " lets " and the " alls " of IV, 4, 36-40, as numbered 
in Alden's edition. The play is devoid of Fletcherian jolts. 

3 V, 2, 63, et seq, 
* II, 2, 90. 



312 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Now, Fortune, if thou beest not onely ill, 
Shew me thy better face, and bring about 
My desperate wheele, that I may clime at length 
And stand, — 

is in the usual manner of Beaumont. Luce's lament, 

beginning : ^ 

Thou that art 
The end of all, and the sweete rest of all 
Come, come, 6, Death ! bring me to thy peace, 
And blot out all the memory I nourish 
Both of my father and my cruell friend, — 

and ending: 

How happy had I bene, if, being borne, 
My grave had bene my cradle ! 

has both the diction and the point of view of Beau- 
mont; and its verse has not more of the double-end- 
ings than he sometimes uses. The subject and the 
mock-heroic purpose do not call for his usual dramatic 
vocabulary : but we recognize his * dissemble,' his 
* carduus ' and * phlebotomy' (compare Philaster), 
his * eyes shoot me through,' his ' do's.' We recog- 
nize him in the frequent appeals to Chance and For- 
tune, in the sensational determination of Jasper to 
test Luce's devotion at the point of the sword, and 
in the series of sensational complications and denoue- 
ments which conclude the romantic plot. In short, 
I agree with the critics ^ who attribute the play, wholly 
or chiefly, to Beaumont. Fletcher may have inserted 
a few verses here and there; but there is nothing in 
sentiment, phrase, or artifice, to prove that he did. 
1 IV, 4, 5. 2 Macaulay, Oliphant, Bullen, and Alden. 



AUTHORSHIP OF " THE KNIGHT " 313 

The diversity of metrical forms is but an evidence 
of the ingenuity of Beaumont. He has used blank 
verse with frequent double-endings to distinguish the 
romantic characters and plot : as in the scenes between 
Venturewell and Jasper, Jasper and Luce. He has 
used the heroic couplet with rhymes, single and double, 
to distinguish the mock-romantic of Venturewell and 
Humphrey, Humphrey and Luce. For the mock-he- 
roic of Ralph he has used the swelling ten-syllabled 
blank verse of Marlowe and Kyd, or the prose of 
Amadis and Palmerin; for his burlesque of the May- 
lord he has used the senarii of the antiquated inter- 
lude. For the conversation of the Merrythoughts 
and of the citizen-critics he has used plain prose; and 
for the tuneful ecstasies of Merrythought senior, a 
sheaf of ballads. This consideration alone, — that 
the metrical and prose forms are chosen with a view 
to the various purposes of the play, — - should convince 
the reader of the vanity of assigning to Fletcher verse 
which evidently had its origin not in any of his pro- 
clivities, but in the temper of Beaumont's Venture- 
well, Jasper, and Luce. 

The Knight of the Burning Pestle was written and 
first acted between June 29, 1607 and April i, 1608. 
The upper limit is fixed, as Boyle has indicated,^ by the 
mention, in Act IV, i, 46, of an incident in The Trav- 
ails of Three English Brothers, " let the Sophy of 
Persia come and christen him a childe," concerning 
which the * Boy ' remarks, i, 48-50, " that will not 
do so well; 'tis stale; it has been had before at the 
Red Bull." The Red Bull, Clerkenwell, had been 
^Engl. Studien, IX. 



314 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

V occupied by Queen Anne's Men (whose plays Beau- 

mont is especially ridiculing), since 1604.^ The Trav- 
ails was written hurriedly by Day, Rowley, and Wil- 
kins after the appearance, June 8, 1607, oi a tract by 
Nixon, on the adventures of the three Shirleys, and 
was performed June 29, by the Queen's Men,^ The 
Travails dealt with a matter of ephemeral interest, 
and would not long have held the public. It is, there- 
fore, likely that the allusion to it in The Knight of 
the Burning Pestle was written shortly after June 29. 
Since the play, according to its first publisher, took 
eight days to write, we cannot assign any date earlier 
than, say, July 10, 1607, for its first performance. 
The lower limit is determined by the certainty that 
The Knight was played by the Queen's Revels' Chil- 
, dren at Black friars; and that they ceased to act there 
as an independent company some time in March 1608. 
The play belonged in 1639 to Beeston's Boys, who had 
it with four others of Beaumont and Fletcher from 
Queen Henrietta's Men. None of these five plays 
had ever been played by the King's Company; it is 
likely that they had come to the Queen Henrietta's 
from the Lady Elizabeth's Men with whom the 
Queen's Revels' Children had been amalgamated in 
1613.^ One of these plays, Cupid's Revenge, had cer- 
tainly come down from the Queen's Revels' Boys in 
that way. 

That the original performance was by a company 
of children appears from numerous passages in the 

1 Wallace, Shakspere's Money Interest in the Globe, Cent. 
Maga., Aug., 1910, p. 510. 

2 Fleay, Chr. Eng. Dr., II, 2^7. 

3 Fleay, H. S., p. 356. 



THE DATE OF "THE KNIGHT" 315 

text; and the only other children's company available 
for consideration between 1603 and 161 1, when the 
manuscript fell into the publisher's hands, is that of 
the Paul's Boys. That the Paul's Boys were not the 
company performing is shown, however, by a pas- 
sage in the Induction, where the citizen-critic, inter- 
rupting the Prologue of the "good-man boy," says: 
" This seven yeares [that] there hath beene playes at 
this house, I have observed it, you have still girds at 
citizens." Now, at no date between the summer of 
1608 and 161 1 could it have been said of the Children 
of Paul's that they had been acting seven years con- 
tinuously at any one " house." The career of the 
Paul's Boys as actors at their cathedral school had 
ended in the summer of 1608, when Robert Keysar, 
Rossiter, and others interested in the rival company 
of the Queen's Revels' Children had subsidized Ed- 
ward Pierce, the manager of the Paul's Boys, to cease 
plays at St. Paul's.^ If between that date and 161 1 
they acted, it was elsewhere, at White friars perhaps, 
and temporarily (not after 1609), and as the i King's 
Revels' Children.^ The citizen-critic, therefore, if 
speaking after the summer of 1608, could not have 
referred to Paul's Boys. If speaking of Paul's Boys 
between 1603 and 1608, the only "house" that he 
can have had in mind would be their school of St. 
Paul's Cathedral ; and to say that there had been plays 
there for seven years would have been utterly point- 

1 Wallace, Shakspere and the Blackfriars, Century Maga., 
Sept., 1910, p. 751. 

2 Murray, Eng. Dram. Comp., i, 353, who cites Nichols, Prog- 
resses, IV, 1074; but Whitefriars had been destined by Keysar 
and others for the Queen's Revels' Children since 1608. 



3i6 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

less, for the Paul's Boys had been acting in their 
school, or in its courtyard, for twenty, one might say 
fifty years, more or less continuously. Fleay conjec- 
tures wildly that they had occupied Whitefriars be- 
tween 1604 and 1607, but that does not explain the 
** seven yeares at this house " ; to say nothing of the 
fact that such occupancy is unproved. An old White- 
friars inn-yard playhouse had been " pulled down " 
in 1582-3. No other Whitefriars Theatre existed 
till 1607, when a new Whitefriars " was occupied by 
six equal sharers with original title from Lord Buck- 
hurst." 1 

The company was not that of St. Paul's; and the 
*' house " was not a school-house, but a regularly con- 
stituted theatre. Now, the only theatre, public or 
private, that, at any rate between 1603 and 161 1, had 
been occupied by a boys' company for " this seven 
yeares " was Blackfriars; and of Blackfriars the state- 
ment could be made only at a date preceding January 
4, 1610, and with reference to the Queen's Revels' 
Children. On that date, as reorganized under Ros- 
siter, Keysar, and others, they received a Patent au- 
thorizing them to open at Whitefriars, " or in any 
other convenient place." For about a month before, 
they had filled an engagement at Blackfriars, the lease 
of which had reverted on August 9, 1608 to Burbadge 
and Shakespeare's company of the King's Players. 
They had ceased playing at Blackfriars as an inde- 
pendent company in March 1608; the theatre had been 

^ Rawlidge, A Monster lately found out, etc., 1622, as quoted 
by Fleay, H. S., ^6'', Wallace, Cent. Maga., Aug., 1910; and 
Thorndike, InU. of B. and F., p. 60. 



THE DATE OF ^* THE KNIGHT" 317 

tenantless after that for six months and then had been 
closed until December 7, 1609, because of the prev- 
alence of the plague. The Citizen's complaint that 
the boys have been girding at citizens '' this seven 
yeares there hath been playes at this house " would 
lose all cogency if spoken of the Queen's Revels' Chil- 
dren when they were acting during the month follow- 
ing December 7, 1609, both because plays had been 
then intermitted for the twenty months preceding, 
and because in 1609 it was not seven but twelve years 
since the boys had begun their occupancy of " this 
house." It could not apply to the seven years be- 
tween 1597, when they first occupied Blackfriars, and 
1604, because The Knight of the Burning Pestle was 
not written till after the Travails of Three English 
Brothers appeared, June 29, 1607. But it does apply, 
with all requisite dramatic and chronological accuracy, 
to the seven years preceding the last date, — or the date 
in March 1608, when, because of their scandalous 
representation of the King of France and his mistress 
in Chapman's Tragedie of Charles, Duke of Byron, 
and because of plays caricaturing and vilifying King 
James, the Queen's Revels' Children were prohibited 
from playing, their principal actors thrown into prison, 
and Blackfriars suppressed. On September 29, 1600, 
Richard Burbadge had let Blackfriars on a twenty-one- 
year lease to Henry Evans, the manager of the 
Queen's Revels' Children, and under the organiza- 
tion of that date they had by 1 607-1 608 been giving 
plays exactly '' this seven yeares at this house." We 
are, as I have said, informed by the publisher of The 
Knight that the play was written in eight days. It 



3i8 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

might have been staged in two or three. If the plague 
regulations were enforced during 1607-8, as I have 
no doubt they were. The Knight was acted between 
July 10 and 23, 1607, or between December 26, 1607 
and the Biron day in March 1608. 

The internal evidence is all confirmatory of this 
period of composition. The Queen Anne's Men of 
the " Red Bull " mentioned in the play obtained their 
title to the Red Bull from Aaron Holland about 1604. 
The songs in the play were common property between 
1604 and 1607; none of the romances ridiculed is of 
a later date than 1607; and of the eight plays men- 
tioned or alluded to, all had been acted before June 
1607 but The Travails; and that was played for the 
first time June 29 of that year. The allusions to ex- 
ternal history such as that in Act IV, ii, 4, to the 
Prince of Moldavia — who left London in Novem- 
ber 1607 — ^and the humorous jibe at the pretty 
Paul's Boys of Mr. Mulcaster, who ceased teaching 
them in 1608, are all for 1607-8.^ Fleay marshals 
an applausive gallery of conjectures for his conjec- 
ture of 1 6 10, but none of them appears to me to have 
any substance; and in view of what has been said, 
and of what will follow, I may dispense with their 
consideration. 

The history of the manuscript is, as has not been 
noted before, also confirmatory of the 1607-8 date. 
The Robert Keysar who rescued the play from " per- 
petuall oblivion " after its failure upon the stage (as 

1 See the impressive array of evidence, internal and external, 
presented by Thomdike, Inii. of B. and F., pp. 59-63 ; and by 
Alden, K.B.P., pp. 166-169 (Belles Lettres Series). 



THE DATE OF "THE KNIGHT" 319 

Burre says in the dedication of the first quarto, and 
who "afterwards" (in 1610-11) turned it over, 
" yet an infant " (i. e. unpubHshed) and " somewhat 
raggied," to Burre fqr pubHcation, is the same " Mr. 
Keysar " who in February 1606, with "Mr. Ken- 
dall," also of the Blackfriars' management, had been 
paid for " Apparrell " furnished for a performance 
given by the Children of Westminster School.^ He 
at no period had any connection with the Paul's Boys. 
He was, as Professor Wallace informs us, a London 
goldsmith who "about this time (1606-7) acquired 
an interest in the shifting fortunes of Blackfriars, 
and became the financial backer of the Queen's Rev- 
els' Children. He had cause to dislike King James 
for oppression in wresting money from the gold- 
smiths." ^ Hence probably the attacks of the Queen's 
Revels' Children upon the King, which helped to bring 
about their suppression at Blackfriars in 1608. Key- 
sar would inevitably know all about the plays per- 
formed by his Children, The Knight of the Burn- 
ing Pestle among the rest, during the last year of 
their occupancy of Blackfriars. And since, according 
to Burre, he appreciated the merits of The Knight it 
was but natural that he, and not some person uncon- 
nected with the company, should have preserved the 
manuscript, — perhaps with a view to having the Chil- 
dren try the play again after they should re-open at 
Whitefriars. With Rossiter, soon after March 1608, 
he was making preparations for such a reorganiza- 

1 Accounts in Athenaeum, 2, 1903, 220. 

2 Wallace, Cent. Maga., Sept. 1910, p. 747. See also Green- 
street Papers in Fleay, H. St., 249. 



320 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

tion. When finally they did re-open at their new 
theatre, in January 1610, they evidently did not take 
up the play. Somewhat later, say 161 1, Keysar sent 
the manuscript to Burre for publication. Burre " fos- 
tred it privately in his bosome these two yeares " and 
brought it out in 161 3. 

The conclusion of Burre's dedicatory address to 
Keysar in the first quarto, of 161 3, has unnecessarily 
complicated both the question of the date of compo- 
sition and that of the source of The Knight of the 
Burning Pestle. "Perhaps," says he, "it {The 
Knight^ will be thought to bee of the race of Don 
Quixote: w^e both may confidently sweare, it is his 
elder above a yeare; and therefore may (by vertue 
of his birth-right) challenge the wall of him. I doubt 
not but they will meet in their adventures, and I hope 
the breaking of one staffe will make them friends; 
and perhaps they will combine themselves, and travell 
through the world to seeke their adventures." This 
denial of indebtedness to Cervantes has been generally 
taken to refer to Shelton's English translation of Don 
Quixote, entered S. R. January 19, 1611-12, and 
printed 1612; and it has, therefore, been supposed by 
many that The Knight was written and first acted in 
1610 or 1611. But if Burre was dating The Knight 
as of 1610 or 161 1, he was ignorant of the fact, as 
established above, that the play was the elder of Shel- 
ton's printed Don Quixote, not merely " above a 
yeare," but above four years. There are only two 
other constructions to be placed upon Burre's state- 
ment : either that the play was the elder above a year 
of the first part of Don Quixote, issued in the Span- 



"DON QUIXOTE" AND "THE KNIGHT" 321 

ish by Cervantes in 1605/ or that it was the elder 
above a year of Shelton's translation as circulated 
among his friends in manuscript, at any rate as early 
as 1609. If Burre was dating the play, according to 
the former interpretation, as of 1604, he was ignorant 
of the fact that it could not have been written till 
after the appearance of The Travails of Three Eng- 
lish Brothers, June 29, 1607. The latter interpreta- 
tion would, if we could adopt it as his understanding 
of the matter, not only comport with the date of the 
production of The Knight in 1607-8, but also, some- 
what roughly, with his own statement that he had 
had the manuscript already in a battered condition in 
his " bosome " since 1610 or 161 1. 

If Burre, who was not a litterateur, did not know 
that Shelton's translation of Don Quixote had been 
going the rounds for years before it was printed in 
1612, everybody else did. Shelton had announced 
as much in his Epistle Dedicatorie to Theophilus, Lord 
Howard of Walden, prefixed to the first quarto of 
161 2. He translated the book, as he says, " some 
five or six yeares agoe " — that would be in 1607, for 
he used the Brussels Reprint of that year as his text, 
— '^ out of the Spanish Tongue into the English in 
the space of forty daies : being thereunto more than 
half enforced through the importunitie of a very deere 
friende, that was desirous to understand the subject. 
After I had given him once a view thereof, I cast it 
aside, where it lay long time neglected in a corner, 
and so little regarded by me as I never once set hand 
to review or correct the same. Since when, at the 

1 For this argument see Engl. Studien, XII, 309. 



322 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

entreatie of others my friends, I was content to let 
it come to light, conditionally that some one or other 
would peruse and amend the errours escaped " — be- 
cause he had not time to revise it himself. In other 
words, Shelton had shown the manuscript transla- 
tion of Don Quixote to but one friend in 1607; and 
it was not till " long time " had elapsed that he began 
to circulate it among his other friends on condition 
that they should correct its errors. The date of cir- 
culation was, probably, about 1609, for in that year 
we have our earliest mention of the reading of Don 
Quixote by an Englishman, — by a dramatic character, 
to be sure, but a character created by Ben Jonson. 
In his Epicoene, acted in 1610, and written the year 
preceding, that dramatist makes Truewit advise the 
young Sir Dauphine to cease living in his chamber 
" a month together upon Amadis de Gaide, or Don 
Quixote, as you are wont." There is no ascription 
of Spanish to Dauphine, who is a typical London gal- 
lant. He would read Amadis in the French, or the 
English translation; and the only translation of Don 
Quixote accessible to him in 1609 would be Shel- 
ton's manuscript of Part One.^ Jonson may himself 
have been one of the friends to whom Shelton sub- 
mitted the translation. There is no reason to believe 
that Jonson had read Cervantes in the original; 
for, as Professor Rudolph Schevill has conclusively 
demonstrated,^ his knowledge of Spanish was ex- 
tremely limited. " The Spanish phrases pronounced 

1 Baudouin's French version of 1608 is merely of the episodic 
narrative of The Curious Impertinent. 

2 On the InUuence of Spanish Literature upon English {Ro- 
manische Forschungen, XX, 613-615, et seq.). 



"DON QUIXOTE" AND "THE KNIGHT" 323 

by the improvised 'hidalgo' in the Alchemist (of 
1610) prove nothing." They were caught, as Pro- 
fessor Schevill says, from the London vogue or may 
have been suppHed by some Spanish acquaintance. 
Indeed, one may even doubt v^hether if he read Shel- 
ton's manuscript Jonson did so with any care, for 
not only in The Alchemist but elsewhere he uniformly 
couples Don Quixote as if a character of chivalric 
romance with Amadis, of whom and his congeners 
Don Quixote is a burlesque. 

As to Burre, however, I do not think that he had 
been informed by Keysar of the exact provenience 
of the manuscript of The Knight, or of the date of 
first acting. I incline to believe that he had the Epis- 
tle Dedicatorie of the newly printed Shelton before 
him when, in 1613, he wrote his dedication of The 
Knight to Robert Keysar; for he runs the figure of 
the book as a " child " and of its " father " and " step- 
father " through his screed as Shelton had run it in 
1612 ; and he hits upon a similar diction of " bosome " 
and " oblivion." But, though he may have been 
gratuitously challenging the wall of Shelton's newly 
printed Don Quixote in favour of The Knight as in 
existence by 1610 or 1611, the only interpretation of 
his " elder above a yeare " that would fit the fact is 
afforded by the composition of the play, as already 
demonstrated, in 1607-8, more than a year before 
Shelton began to circulate his manuscript. 

In spite of Burre's assertion of the priority of The 
Knight of the Burning Pestle, nearly every editor or 
historian who has touched upon The Knight informs 
us that it is " undoubtedly derived from Don Quix- 



324 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

ote.'' If (as I am sure was not the case) the play 
was written after 1608, Beaumont, or Beaumont and 
Fletcher, could have derived suggestions for it from 
Shelton's manuscript, first circulated in 1609. That 
Beaumont, at any rate, was acquainted with the Span- 
ish hero by 161 o, appears from his familiarity 
with the Epicoene in which as we have observed, Don 
Quixote is mentioned; for he wrote commendatory 
verses for the quarto of that play, entered S. R. 
September 20 of that year. If, on the other hand, 
The Knight, as I hold, was written in 1607 or 1608, 
the author or authors, provided they read Spanish, 
could have derived suggestions from Cervantes' origi- 
nal of 1605; or if they did not read Spanish, from 
hearsay. The latter source of information would be 
the more likely, for although sixteen of the ignorantly 
so-called *' Beaumont and Fletcher " plays have been 
traced to plots in Spanish originals, there is not one 
of those plots which either of the poets might not 
have derived from English or French translation; 
and in none of the sixteen plays is there any evidence 
that either of the dramatists had a reading knowledge 
of Spanish/ As to the possibility of information 
by hearsay, other dramatists allude to Don Quixote 
as early as 1607-8 ;2 and, indeed, it would be vir- 

1 Of this I am assured by my colleague, Professor Rudolph 
Schevill, who has made a special study of the plays and their 
sources, and has published some of his conclusions in the article 
in Romanische Forschungen, already cited ; others, communicated 
by him to Dr. H. S. Murch, appear in Yale Studies in English, 
XXXIII, The K.B.P., Introduction. Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach's 
unpubHshed conclusions, as cited by Miss Hatcher, John Fletcher, 
etc., 1905, p. 42, are to the same effect. 

2 Wilkins, Miseries of Enforced Marriage, III ; Middleton, 
Your Five Gallants, IV, 8; cited by Schevill, ut supra. 



"DON QUIXOTE" AND "THE KNIGHT" 325 

tually impossible that any literary Londoner could 
have escaped the oral tradition of so popular and 
impressive a masterpiece two years after its 
publication. 

All this supposition of derivation from Don Quixote 
is, however, so far as verbal indebtedness goes, or 
indebtedness for motifs, episodes, incidents and their 
sequence, characters, machinery, dramatic construc- 
tion, manners, sentiments, and methods of satire, a 
phantom caught out of the clear sky. So far as the 
satire upon the contemporary literature of chivalry 
is concerned, when the ridicule is not of English 
stuff unknown to Cervantes it is of Spanish material 
translated into English and already satirized by Eng- 
lishmen before Cervantes wrote his Don Quixote. 
An examination of The Knight and of the Don in any 
version, and of contemporary English literature, re- 
veals incontestibly not only that the material satirized, 
the phrases and ideas, come from works in English, 
but that even the method of the satire is derived from 
that of preceding English dramatic burlesque rather 
than from that of Cervantes. 

The title of the play was suggested by The Knight 
of the Burning Sword, an English translation, cur- 
rent long before 1607, of the Spanish Amadis of 
Greece, Prince and Knight of the Burning Szvord. 
Ten full years before 1607 Falstaff had dubbed his 
red-nosed Bardolph " Knight of the Burning Lamp." 
The farcical, but eminently sane, grocer's apprentice, 
turned Knight for fun, grows out of Hey wood's 
Foiire Premises, and Day and Wilkins's Travails, and 
the English Palmerins, etc. He has absolutely noth- 



326 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

ing in common with the glorious but pathetically 
unbalanced Don of Cervantes. Nor is there any re- 
semblance between Ralph's Palmerin-born Squire 
and Dwarf — and that embodiment of commonsense, 
Sancho Panza.^ The specific conception of The 
Knight of the Burning Pestle, a satire upon the craze 
of London tradesmen for romances of chivalry, for 
" bunches of Ballads and Songs, all ancient," for the 
bombast and sensationalism of Kyd's Spanish Trag- 
edy, Marlowe's True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of 
York, even of Shakespeare's Hotspur, and of dramas 
of bourgeois knight-errantry, — a burlesque of the civic 
domestic virtues and military prowess of prentices 
and shop-keepers, — is much more applicable to the 
conditions and aspirations of contemporary Bow-Bells 
and the affectations of the contemporary stage than 
to those which begot and nourished the madness of 
the Knight of La Mancha. 

Beaumont may have received from the success of 
the Don Quixote of 1605 some impulse provocative 
to the writing of The Knight, but a dramatic satire, 
such as The Knight, might have occurred to him. if 
Don Quixote had never been written; just as that 
other dramatic satire upon the dramas of folk-lore 
romance, The Old Wives Tale, had occurred to Peele 
some fifteen years before Don Quixote appeared; and 
as it had occurred to the author of Thersites to ridi- 
cule, upon the stage, Greek tales of heroism and Brit- 
ish worthies of knighthood and the greenwood still 
fifty-five years earlier. The puritan and the ritualist, 
the country justice and the squire, the schoolmaster 
1 See Schevill, u. s. 



THE SOURCES OF " THE KNIGHT " Z2j 

and the scribbling pedant, the purveyor of marvels of 
forest and marsh, the knight-adventurer of ancient 
lore or of modern creation, the damsel distressed or 
enamoured of visionary castles, had, one and all, 
awakened laughter upon the Tudor stage. The leisure 
wasted, and the emotion misspent, over the Morte 
d'Arthur and the histories of Huon of Bordeaux, 
Guy df Warwick, Bevis of Hamptoun, or of 
Robin Hood and Clim of the Clough, had been de- 
plored by many an anxious educator and essayist 
of the day. Why was it not time and the fit oc- 
casion, in a period when city grocers and their 
wives would tolerate no kind of play but such as re- 
vamped the more modern tales of chivalry, or tricked 
tradesmen out in the factitious glory of quite recent he- 
roes of romance, — why was it not time for an attack 
upon the vogue of Anthony Munday's translations of 
the now offending cycles, Amadis of Gaul, Palmerin 
de Oliva, Palmerin of England, and ipon the vogue 
of the English versions of The Mirror of Knighthood 
with its culminating bathos of the Knight of the Sunne 
and His Brother Rosicleerf These had, in various 
instalments, befuddled the popular mind for thirty 
years. 

Ben Jonson already, in his Every Man out of 
His Humour (1599), had satirized the common 
affectation under the similitude of a country knight, 
Puntarvolo, who, if not crazed, was at any rate 
*^ wholly consecrated to singularity " by reason of 
undue absorption of romances of chivalry, a singu- 
larity of " fashion, phrase, and gesture " of the An- 
thony Munday type and the type glassed in the Mirror 



328 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

of Knighthood. Sir Puntarvolo, who " sits a great 
horse " and '' courts his own lady, as she were a 
stranger never encountered before," — who feigns that 
his own house is a castle, who summons with trumpet- 
blast the waiting-woman to the window, and, salut- 
ing her " after some little flexure of the knee," asks 
for the lord of the edifice, and that the " beauties " 
of the " lady " may shine on this side of the building, — 
who *' planet struck " by the " heavenly pulchritude " 
of his long-sutfering and much bewildered poor old 
wife, conveys to her the information that he is a poor 
knight-errant pursuing through the forest a hart " es- 
caped by enchantment," and that, wearied, he and his 
servant make " suit to enter " her fair abode, — Sir 
Puntarvolo, who every morning thus performs fan- 
tastic homage, what is he but a predecessor of Don 
Quixote and Ralph alike, fashioned out of the ma- 
terials of decadent chivalric fiction common to both? 
In 1600, Robert Anton had burlesqued in prose and 
rhyme the romantic ballads of the day in his ludicrous 
Heroical Adventures of the Knight of the Sea, where 
" the queen of the fairies transforms a submissive and 
apathetic cow into a knight-errant to do her business 
in the world" ^ And in 1605, also before the ap- 
pearance of Cervantes' burlesque, Chapman, with 
the collaboration of Jonson and Marston, had, in 
Eastward Hoe, satirized that other kind of knight, 
him of the city and by purchase, in the character of 
Sir Petronel Flash; and, with him, the aspirations of 
romance- fed merchants' daughters who would wed 
knights and dwell in country-castles wrested from 
iH. V. Routh, in C. H. L., IV, 410. 



THE SOURCES OF " THE KNIGHT " 329 

giants. Nor had these authors failed to specify the 
sources of delusion, the Mirror of Knighthood, the 
Paimerin of England, etc. That both Beaumont 
and Fletcher were alive, without prompting from Cer- 
vantes, to the mania of chivalric emulation which 
obsessed the train-bands of London is attested by 
the bombastic talk of '' Rosicleer " which Fletcher 
puts into the mouth of the city captain in Philastcr, 
a play that was written about two years later than 
The Knight, in 1609 or 1610. There had been mus- 
ters of the City companies at Mile End as early as 
1532, and again under Elizabeth in 1559, and 1585, 
and 1599, when as many as 30,000 citizens were 
trained there. But the muster in which Ralph had 
been chosen " citty captaine " was evidently that of 
1605, a general muster under James I. 

Why, then, should we suppose that it was beyond 
the genius of a Beaumont to conceive, as Peele, Jon- 
son, Chapman, Marston, and others had conceived, 
a drama which should burlesque the devotees of such 
romances as were the fad of the day? And to con- 
ceive it without the remotest suggestion from Don 
Quixote? Whether Beaumont read Spanish or not, 
and there is no proof that he did read it; whether he 
had heard of Don Quixote or not, and there is little 
doubt that he had, there is nothing in The Knight 
of the Burning Pestle that in any way presupposes 
either verbal acquaintance with, or constructive de- 
pendence upon, the burlesque of Cervantes.^ In short, 

iThe lines, 

Who like Don Quixote do advance 
Against a windmill our vaine lance, 
occur in a copy of verses To the Mutable Faire included among 



330 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Professor Schevill, in the article cited above, 
and following him Dr. Murch, in an admirable intro- 
duction to his edition of The Knight , have shown that 
Beaumont's conception of the hero, Ralph, not only 
is not of a piece with, but is fundamentally different 
from, Cervantes' conception of Don Quixote; and 
they have demonstrated with a minuteness of chap- 
ter and verse that need not be recapitulated here that 
the motives, machinery and characters, ideas and 
phrases are, in so far as they have relation to ro- 
mances of chivalry, drawn out of, or suggested by, the 
English translations already enumerated. This dem- 
onstration applies to the adoption of the squire, the 
rescue of Mrs. Merrythought, the incident of the cas- 
ket, the liberation of the barber's patients, the mock- 
heroic love-affair, as well as to the often adduced 
barber's basin and the scene of the inn. Of the sit- 
uations, there is none that is not a logical issue of 
the local conditions or the presuppositions of an origi- 
nal plot ; w^hereas there are, on the other hand, numer- 
ous situations in Don Quixote, capable of dramatic 
treatment, that the Elizabethan playwright of 1607-8 
could hardly have refrained from annexing if he had 
used that story as a source. The setting or back- 
ground of The Knight, as Professor Schevill has said, 
in no way recalls that of the Don, " and it is difficult to 
see how any inspiration got from Cervantes should 
have failed to include at least a slight shadow of some- 
thing which implies an acquaintance with Rocinante 

The Poems of Francis Beaumont in the edition of 1640. But the 
volume includes numerous poems not written by Beaumont, and 
is one of the most uncritical collections that ever was printed. 
This poem is by Waller. 



THE SOURCES OF " THE KNIGHT 331 

and Sancho Panza." Beaumont, in addition, not only 
satirizes, as I have said, the chivalric and bourgeois 
dramas of Heywood, // You Know Not Me, You 
Know Nobody, etc., and dramas of romantic marvel 
like Mucedorus and the Travails, and parodies with 
rare humour the rant of Senecan tragedy ; he not only 
ridicules the military ardour and pomp of the London 
citizens, and pokes fun at their unsophisticated as- 
sumption of dramatic insight and critical instinct, — 
with all this satire of the main plot and of the specta- 
tor-gods in the machinery, he has combined a romantic 
plot of common life — Jasper, Luce, and Humphrey, — 
and a comic plot of humours in which Jasper's father, 
mother, and brother live as Merrythoughts should 
He has produced a whole that in drama was an inno- 
vation and in burlesque a triumph. The Knight was 
still an acting play in the last quarter of the seven- 
teenth century. During the past thirteen years it has 
been acted by academic amateurs five times in 
America. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE FIVE CENTRAL PLAYS 

SIX. — The Coxcomb e was first printed in the folio 
of 1647. Our earliest record of its acting is 
of a performance at Court by the Children of the 
Queen's Revels in 1612.^ The day was between 
October 16 and 24. A list of the principal actors, 
all Queen's Children, preserved in the folio of 1679, 
indicates, however, that this was not the first per- 
formance; for three of the actors listed had left that 
company by August 29, 161 1; one of them (Joseph 
Taylor) perhaps before March 30, 1610. The list 
was evidently contemporary with the first perform- 
ance. The absolute upper limit of the composition 
was 1604, for one of the characters speaks of the 
taking of Ostend. If the play, as we are dogmatic- 
ally informed by a credulous sequence of critics who 
take statements at second-hand, principally from Ger- 
man doctors' theses, were derived from Cervantes' 
story. El Curioso Impertinente, which appeared in 
the First Part of Don Quixote, printed 1605, or (since 
we have no evidence that our dramatists read Span- 
ish), from Baudouin's French translation which was 
licensed April 26, 1608^ and may have reached Eng- 

1 Cited by Oldys (Ms. note in Langbaine's Account of Engl. 
Dram. Poets, p. 208) — Dyce. 

2 For this information I am indebted to my colleague, Pro- 
fessor Schevill. 

332 



THE DATE OF " THE COXCOMBE " 333 

land about June, — we might have a definite earher 
limit of later date. But there is no resemblance be- 
tween the motif of Cervantes' story, in which a 
husband out of curiosity and an impudent desire to 
heighten the treasure of his love would try his wife's 
fidelity, and that of Beaumont and Fletcher's play, 
where there is no question of a trial of honour. In 
Beaumont and Fletcher, we have a revelation of lust 
at first sight on the part of the husband's friend, 
Mercury, of unnatural friendly pandering on the 
part of that * natural fool ' the husband, Antonio, and 
of easy acquiescence on the part of Maria, the wife, 
in the cuckolding of her idiotic coxcomb, who with 
the wool pulled over his eyes takes her back be- 
lieving that she is innocent. In Cervantes, the hus- 
band, sure of his wife and adoring her, urges his 
friend to make trial of her honour; the friend, 
outraged at first by the suggestion, refuses, but 
finally succumbs to passion and wins the wife, like- 
wise, at first, above suspicion; and all die trag- 
ically. There is no resemblance in treatment, atmos- 
phere, incidents, or dialogue. The only community 
of conception is that of a husband playing with fire — 
risking cuckoldom. But Cervantes' character of the 
husband is sentimentally deluded; Beaumont and 
Fletcher's is a contemptible and willing wittol. If 
Beaumont and Fletcher derived their plot from Cer- 
vantes, all that can be said is that they have mutilated 
and vulgarized the original out of all possibility of 
recognition.^ 

1 1 know but two sane accounts of this matter : A. S. W. Rosen- 
bach's in Mod. Lang. Notes, loi, Column 362 (1898) ; and Wolf- 



334 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Other English dramatists dealing with the theme 
of The Curious Impertinent between 1611 and 1615 
followed Cervantes more or less closely in the main 
motif, in incident, and in dialogue: the author of 
The Second Maiden's Tragedy, for instance, who 
made use of Baudouin's translation; and Nathaniel 
Field, who used either Baudouin or Shelton's pub- 
lication of 1612 in his Amends for Ladies. But Beau- 
mont and Fletcher in their tale of a husband cuck- 
olded and pommeled were drawing upon another 
source, one of the many variants oi Le Mari coccu, 
battu et content, to be found in Boccaccio and before 
him in Old French poems, and French and Italian 
Nouvelles. If they derived anything from Cervan- 
tes, whose theme is lifted from the Orlando Furioso, 
it was merely the suggestion for a fresh drama of 
cuckoldry. That their play was regarded by others 
as thus inspired appears, I think, from a pas- 
sage in Ben Jonson's Alchemist, IV, vii, 40-41,' where, 
after Kastril has said to Surly, " You are a Pimpe, 
and a Trig, and an Amadis de Gaule, or a Don Quix- 
ote," Drugger adds, " Or a Knight o' the curious 
cox-combe. Doe you see?" Field and the rest, writ- 
ing in or after 161 1, had uniformly referred to Cer- 
vantes' cuckold as the Curious Impertinent. Jonson 
wrote his Alchemist between July 12 and October 3, 
1 610, and up to that time the cuckold had been drama- 
tized as Coxcomb only by Beaumont and Fletcher. 
The prefix * Curious ' indicates that in Jonson's mind 
his friend's play is associated with Cervantes' novel; 

gang von Wurzbach's, in Romanische Forschungen, XX, pp. 514- 
536 (1907). 



THE DATE OF " THE COXCOMBE " 335 

and the further prefix of * The Knight ' looks very 
much like a reminiscence of '' The Knight of the 
Burning Pestle," which had been played some two 
years before. This argument from contemporaneity 
of inspiration and allusion inclines me to date the 
upper limit of The Coxcomhe about 1609, after Bau- 
douin's translation Le Curieux Impertinent had 
reached England, and Shelton's manuscript had been 
put in circulation. 

If to this conjecture we could add a precise determi- 
nation of the period of Joseph Taylor's connection 
with the Queen's Revels' Children, we should have a 
definite lower limit for the performance of The Cox- 
combe in which he took part. But I find it impossi- 
ble to decide whether Taylor had been with the 
Queen's Revels up to about March 30, 1610, upon 
which day his name appears among the Duke of York's 
Players who were recently reorganized and had just 
obtained a new patent; or had been up to that time 
with the predecessors of the Duke of York's (Prince 
Charles's) Company, and had left them shortly after 
March 30 for the Queen's Revels' Children. In 
favour of the former alternative are (i) that in the 
list of the Queen's Revels' actors in The Coxcomhe 
he appears second to Field only, as if a player of 
long standing with them and high in the company's es- 
teem at the time of the performance; (2) that he 
does not appear among the actors in the list for 
Epicoene which was presented first by the Queen's 
Revels' Children between January 4 and March 25, 
1610: Field is still first, Barkstead, who had been 
eighth on the Coxcomhe list, appears now second, as 



336 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

if promoted to Taylor's place, and Giles Carey is 
third in both lists; (3) that in the March 30 patent 
to the Duke of York's Players his name ranks only 
fifth, as if that of a recent acquisition. On this basis 
the lower limit would be March 25, 1610. In favour 
of the latter alternative, viz., that Taylor joined the 
Queen's Children from the Duke of York's, at a date 
later than March 30, 1610, are the considerations: (i) 
that when the new Princess Elizabeth's Company, 
formed April 11, 161 1, gives a bond to Henslowe on 
August 29 of that year, Taylor's name appears with 
two of the Queen's Revels' Children of March 1610, 
as if all three had left the Queen's Revels for the 
new company at the same time; and (2) that their 
names appear close together after that of the principal 
organizer as if not only actors of repute in the com- 
pany which they had left but prime movers in the 
new organization. On this basis the lower limit for 
the performance of The Coxcomhe, at a time w^hen 
all three were yet Queen's Revels' Children, would 
be August 29, 161 1. Consulting the restrictions ne- 
cessitated by the plague rate, we have, then, an option 
for the date of acting: either between December 7, 
1609 and July 12, 1610, when Jonson had begun his 
Alchemist, or between November 29, 1610 and July 
161 1. In the latter case Ben Jonson's "Knight o' 
the curious coxcombe " would precede the perform- 
ance of Beaumont and Fletcher's play and could not 
be an allusion. In the former, it would immediately 
follow the acting of The Coxcomhe, and would mani- 
festly be suggested by that play. I prefer the former 
option; and date the acting, — on the assumption that 



HIS SHARE IN " THE COXCOMBE " 337 

Taylor left the Queen's Revels by March 30, 1610, — 
before that date/ Since Fletcher's contribution to 
the play has been mangled by a reviser it is impossible 
to draw conclusions as to the date of composition 
from the evidence of his literary style. But the char- 
acteristics of Beaumont in the minor plot are those 
of the period in which the Letter to Ben Jonson and 
Philaster were written. The play as first performed 
was condemned for its length by *' the ignorant mul- 
titude." 2 I believe that it was one of the two or three 
unsuccessful comedies which preceded Philaster; and, 
as I have said above, that it is the play referred to in 
the Letter to Ben Jonson, toward the end of 1609.^ 
If the date of acting was before January 4, 16 10, the 
theatre was Blackfriars; if after, Whitefriars. 

The Prologue in the first folio speaks of a revision. 
But though the hand of one, and perhaps of another, 
reviser is unmistakably present, the play is properly 
included among Beaumont and Fletcher's works. In 
the commendatory verses of 1647, Hills and Gardiner 
speak of the play as Fletcher's, but all tests show 
that Beaumont wrote a significant division of it, — the 
natural, vigorous, tender, and poetic subplot of 
Ricardo's desertion of Viola and his ultimate reclama- 
tion, — with the exception of three scenes and parts 
of two or three more. The exceptions are the first 
thirty-five lines of Act I, which have been supplied 
by some reviser; i, 3, in which also the reviser ap- 
pears; I, 5, the drinking-bout in the tavern, where 

1 Oliphant, Engl. Stud., XV, 322. Macaulay, * probably 1610/ 
"^Prologue in the first folio. 
3 Chapter VII. 



338 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

some of the words (e. g. '' claw'd ") indicate Fletcher, 
— and the gratuitous obscenity, Fletcher or his reviser ; 
and Act II, 2, where Viola is bound by the tinkers and 
rescued by Valerio.-^ Perhaps, also, the last thirty- 
six lines of Act III, 3, where Fletcher is discernible 
in the afterthoughts '' a likely wench, and a good 
wench," ** a very good woman, and a gentlewoman," 
and the hand of a reviser in the mutilation of the 
verse; and certainly Act IV, 3, where Fletcher ap- 
pears at his best in this play. 

The romantic little comedy of Ricardo and Viola 
is so loosely joined with the foul portrayal of the 
Coxcomb who succeeds in prostituting his wife to 
his friend, that it might be published separately and 
profitably as the work of Beaumont.^ It is well 
constructed; and it conveys a noble tribute to the 
purity and constancy of woman, her grace of for- 
giveness, and her influence over erring man. When 
Viola speaks she is a living person, instinct with reck- 
lessness, sweetness, and pathos. Few heroines of 
Elizabethan comedy have compressed so much reality 
and poetry into so narrow a compass. " Might not," 
she whispers when stealing forth at night to meet 
Ricardo : — ^ 

Might not God have made 
A time for envious prying folk to sleep 
Whilst lovers met, and yet the sun have shone? 

And then: 

1 Even here, as Oliphant has said, Viola's first speech " is pure 
Beaumont." 

2 His scenes are I, 4, 6; II, 4; III, 3 (to "where I may find 
service " ; IV, i, 2, 7 ; V. 2,' and the last twenty-seven lines of V, 3. 

3 I, 4. Scenes as arranged in Dyce, Vol. III. 



HIS SHARE IN " THE COXCOMBE " 339 

Alas, how valiant and how fraid at once 
Love makes a Virgin ! 

When she comes upon her lover staggering outside 
the tavern with his sodden comrades/ with what sim- 
plicity she shudders : 

I never saw a drunken man before ; 

But these I think are so. . . . 

My state is such, I know not how to think 

A prayer fit for me ; only I could move 

That never Maiden more might be in love ! 

When, rescued from thieves in the country, she finds 
that her rescuer is even more a peril,^ with what 
childlike trust she appeals: 

Pray you, leave me here 
Just as you found me, a poor innocent, 
And Heaven will bless you for it ! 

When again deserted, with what pathos she sighs: 

" I'll sit me down and weep? 
All things have cast me from 'em but the earth. 
The evening comes, and every little flower 
Droops now, as well as I ! 

And, finally, when she has rediscovered Ricardo, and 
conquered his self-reproach by her forgiveness, which 
is " to love you," with w^hat admirable touch of nature 
and delicious humour she gives verisimilitude to her 
story and herself : ^ 

II, 6. 2 III, 3. 3V, 2. 



340 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Methinks I would not now, for any thing, 
But you had mist me : I have made a story 
Will serve to waste many a winter's fire, 
When we are old. I '11 tell my daughters then 
The miseries their Mother had in love, 
And say, " My girls, be wiser " ; yet I would not 
Have had more wit myself. 

Ricardo, too, is a creative study in the development 
of personality; and the rural scenes and characters 
are convincing. 

In the main plot Beaumont had no hand whatever, 
unless it be in the prose of the trial-scene at the end 
of the fifth act. The rest is Fletcher's; but in a few 
scenes his work has been revamped, and in verse as 
well as style degraded by the reviser. Oliphant 
thinks that here and there Massinger may be traced ; ^ 
and here and there, Rowley.^ I should be sorry to 
impute any of the mutilations to the former. I think 
that the irregular lines, trailing or curtailed, the weak 
endings, the finger-counted syllables, puerile accen- 
tuation, and bad grammar have much nearer kinship 
with the earlier output of the latter. But of what- 
ever sins of supererogation his revisers may have been 
guilty, the prime offense is Fletcher's — in drama- 
tizing that story at all. To make a comedy out of 
cuckoldry was not foreign to the genius of the Eliza- 
bethans : for the pruriency of it w^e can make historical 
allowance. But a comedy in which the wittol-hero 
successfully conducts the cuckolding of himself is 
nauseating. And that the wittol, his adulterous wife, 

1 1, I, 20 (to Antonio's entry), III, i^ (to servant's entry). 
2 111,2; IV, 4; V, 1,3. 



THE DATE OF " PHILASTER " 34i 

and the fornicator should conclude the affair in mutual 
gratulation is, from the dramatic point of view, worse 
even than prurient and nauseating ; it is unnatural, and 
therefore unsuited to artistic effect. No amount of 
technical ingenuity on Fletcher's part could have 
made his contribution to this play worthy of literary 
criticism. 

Though The Coxcomhe was not successful in its first 
production before the " ignorant multitude," it was 
" in the opinion of men of worth well received and 
favoured." We have seen that it was played at Court 
in 1 612 in the festivities for the Elector Palatine's 
approaching marriage with the Princess Elizabeth. 
It was revived for Charles I and Queen Henrietta 
in 1636; and it was one of the twenty-seven *' old 
plays " presented in the City theatres after the Resto- 
ration, and before 1682. In the revivals Beaumont's 
romantic subplot gradually assumed the dominant 
position, and it was finally borrowed outright for a 
comedy called The Fugitives, constructed by Richard- 
son and acted by the Drury Lane company in 1792. 
With Palmer in the part of Young Manly (the 
Ricardo of the original), and Mrs. Jordan as Julia 
(alias Beaumont's Viola), the adaptation ran for a 
dozen nights or more. 

7. — Philaster or Love lies a-Bleeding was " divers 
times acted at the Globe, and Blacke-Friers by his 
Majesties Servants." Under the second title in the 
Scourge of Folly, entered for publication October 8, 
1610, Davies of Hereford appears to mention it; and 
I have already stated my reasons as based upon the 



342 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

history of the theatres ^ for believing that its first 
performance took place between December 7, 1609 
and July 12, 16 10. 

We might have something like confirmation of this 
date from the grouping of epigrams in Da vies of 
Hereford's Scourge of Folly, if we could affirm that 
they were arranged in the order of their composition. 
For just before the epigram on Love lies a-B lee ding, 
which, I think, without doubt, applies to Philaster, 
appears one To the Roschis of these times, Mr. W. 
Ostler, saluting him as ** sole king of actors." Now 
Osteler, Ostler, or Osier, had been one of the Queen's 
Revels' Children, — most of them from thirteen to six- 
teen years of age at the time, — in 1601 when Jonson's 
Poetaster was acted. He could not have been more 
than twenty-three years of age v/hile still playing with 
the Queen's Children in 1608; and he w^ould certainly 
not have been styled " sole king of actors " at that 
age. According to the supplication of Cuthbert Bur- 
badge and others in the well-known suit of 1635 con- 
cerning the shares in the Blackfriars theatre,^ before 
Evans surrendered the lease of that theatre in 1608, 
some of the Queen's Revels' Children " growing up 
to bee men, which were Underwood, Field, Ostler, 
were taken to strengthen the King's service; and the 
more to strengthen the service, the boys daily wearing 
out, it was considered that house would bee as fitt 
for ourselves [the King's Company], and soe [we] 
purchased the lease remaining from Evans with our 
money, and placed men players, which were Hemings, 

^ Chapter VII, above. 

' Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, I, 317. 



THE DATE OF " PHILASTER '' 343 

Condell, Shakespeare, etc." On the face of it this 
deposition places the transference of Underwood, 
Field, and Ostler to the King's Company between the 
beginning of April 1608 when the Revels' Children 
were temporarily suppressed and August of that year 
w^hen the Burbadges, Shakespeare, Hemings, and 
others took over Evans's unexpired lease of Black- 
friars with a view to occupying it themselves. But 
the deposition of Cuthbert Burbadge was not made 
till twenty-seven years after the occurrence described ; 
and is not to be trusted as a statement of the sequence 
of events. The Boys may have acted temporarily 
with, or under the supervision of, the King's Com- 
pany at Black friars between December 7, 1609 and 
January 4, 1610; but one of them, Field, is at the 
head of the new Queen's Revels at Whitefriars by 
March 25, 1610, and does not appear in the lists of 
the King's Men till 1616; and there is no record of 
Underwood and Ostler as members of the latter com- 
pany before the end of 161 o, when they acted in 
Jonson's Alchemist (after October 3). Since Un- 
derwood and Ostler were not with the new Queen's 
Revels after January of that year, it is probable that 
Davies's epigram to the latter as " the Roscius of 
these times " in the Scourge of Folly, entered for 
publication on October 8, 16 10, was written after 
Ostler had attained distinction in Shakespeare's com- 
pany, the company of the leading actors of the day, 
and that the grouping of the epigram to Ostler 
with that of the epigram to Fletcher on Philaster 
presented by that company indicates contempor- 
aneity in the composition of the epigrams, — that is 



344 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

to say, between January 4 and October, 16 10. 
Since, however, the epigrams in The Scourge of 
Folly, though frequently arranged by groups, some- 
times of mental association, sometimes of contempo- 
raneous composition, do not follow a continuous 
chronological order, the juxtaposition of these two 
epigrams cannot be regarded as more than a feather's 
evidence to the direction of the wind. Of much 
greater weight as confirming the date of Philaster, 
as conjectured above, is its resemblance to Shake- 
speare's Cymbeiine not only in general features of 
background and atmosphere, plot, typical characters, 
romantic motive, situations, and style, but also in 
specific detail. I shall presently attempt to show at 
greater length that there is nothing in the Philaster 
or the Cymbeiine to indicate the priority of the for- 
mer. But I must at the risk of anticipating indicate 
in this place though briefly the argument of a later 
chapter.^ For the Cymbeiine, I accept the date as- 
signed by the majority of critics, 1609. Shakespeare 
had had the character of Imogen (or Innogen) in 
mind since he first introduced her, years before, as 
a silent personage in Mitch Ado about Nothing (the 
quarto of 1600). In execution the play is, with The 
Winter's Tale and the Tempest, the dramatic sequel 
of that first of his "dramatic romances," — of which 
the leading conception is the loss and recovery of a 
wife or child, — the Pericles written in 1607 or 1608, 
And since already in Pericles, Shakespeare had blazed 
this new path, I cannot for a moment accept the 

1 Chapter XXVIII, Did the Beaumont ' Romance ' InHuence 
Shakespeare? 



THE DATE OF " PHILASTER " 345 

hypothesis that he is in his Cymbeline borrowing pro- 
fusely from Philaster, a work of comparatively un- 
established dramatists who had but recently been 
admitted to authorship for the company of which 
Shakespeare had been for eighteen years the principal, 
almost the only, playwright. It is much more accord- 
ing to human probability that the younger dramatists, 
since about the beginning of 1610 associated with 
the King's Company and its enterprises, should have 
adapted their technical and poetic style of construc- 
tion to the somewhat novel — to them entirely novel 
— method of the seasoned playwright of the King's 
Servants, as tried and approved in Pericles and Cym- 
beline. And still the more so when one reflects that, 
in Pericles and Cymbeline, aside from the leading 
conception, everything of major or minor detail had 
been already anticipated by Shakespeare himself in 
earlier romantic comedies from The Two Gentleman 
of Verona to As You Like It and Tzvelfth Night; 
and that there is no salient characteristic of dramatic 
construction in Philaster, otherwise original and po- 
etically impressive as it is, which a study of those 
earlier comedies and of the Pericles and Cymbeline 
would not suggest. I, therefore, rest with some as- 
surance upon the conviction that Philaster was first 
acted by the King's Company, soon after Beaumont 
and Fletcher began to write for it, say between De- 
cember 1609 and July 1610. 

The play was first published in a quarto of 1620 
which ascribes it, as does the vastly improved quarto 
of 1622, to Beaumont and Fletcher. In his epigram, 
addressed somewhat before October 8, 16 10 to "the 



346 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

well-deserving Mr. John Fletcher," John Davies ap- 
pears to give that author credit for practically the 
whole work, — " Thou . . . raign'st in Arte, Judge- 
ment, and Invention," and adds a compliment for 
'* thine as faire as faithfull Sheepheardesse." Her- 
rick, writing for the folio of 1647, mentions Love Lies 
a-Bleeding among Fletcher's " incomparable plays " ; 
and Thomas Stanley seems to ascribe to him defi- 
nitely the scene " when first Bellario bled." John 
Earle, however, writing '' on Master Beaumont, pres- 
ently after his death " comes nearer the truth when 
he says: 

Alas, what flegme are they [Plautus and Aristophanes], 

compared to thee, 
In thy Philaster and Maids Tragedy! 
Where 's such an humour as thy Bessus ? pray. . . . 

for, with the exception of three scenes, two half- 
scenes and a few insertions or revisions by Fletcher, 
Philaster is Beaumont's (and practically the same 
holds true of The M aides Tragedy, and the Bessus 
play — A King and No King, In Philaster 
Fletcher's scenes, as proved by rhetorical tests, and by 
metrical when they may be applied, are I, i^ (from 
the King's entry, line 89 — line 358,^ — a revision and 
enlargement of Beaumont's original sketch), II, 2* 
(from Enter Megra), II, 4^ (from Megra above), 
V, 3 and V, 4. The first part of Act II, 4 was written 
by Beaumont; but Fletcher has inserted lines 14 to 
29 ( from Enter Arethusa and Bellario to " how 
brave she keeps him"). Similarly, the first draught 
1 Lines are numbered as in the Variorum edition. 



HIS SHARE IN " PHILASTER " 347 

of Act III, 2 was Beaumont's; certainly lines 1-34 
(exit King), 105-112 (the opening of Philaster's long 
tirade and 129-173 (from Philaster's exit to end). 
But beginning with Arethusa's soliloquy, line 35, we 
find insertions marked by Fletcher's metrical char- 
acteristics, his alliterations, favourite words and ideas, 
tautological expansions, repetitions, interrogations, 
triplets, redundant " alls " and ** hows." The last 
three lines of that soliloquy are his : 

Soul-sick with poison, strike the monuments 
Where noble names lie sleeping, till they sweat 
And the cold marble melt ; ^ 

and he has overlaid (in lines 1 13-128) with his rhe- 
torical triplets, his " alls " and " hows " the genuine 
poetry of Philaster's accusation of Arethusa. " The 
story of a woman's face," her inconstancy, the shadow 
quality even of her " goodness " soon past and for- 
gotten, — " these sad texts " ^ Fletcher " to his last 
hour " is never weary of repeating. 

It will be observed that, in general, Fletcher's scenes 
are elaborative, bombastic, verbally witty, conversa- 
tionally easy, at times bustling, at times spectacular, 
but not vitally contributory to the business of the 
play. They comprise the longest speeches of the 
King, Pharamond, Philaster, Megra, and Bellario. 
Some of these, such as the King's denunciation of 

1 Fletcher affects this figure, cf. A Wife for a Month, Act II, 
2, lines 47-48. 

2 C/. his lines in M aides Tragedy, IV, i, 252-254; in King and 
No King, IV, 2, 57-62; Philaster, V, 4, 114; Hum. Lieut., IV, 
5, 5I-; Mad Lover, III, 4, 105; Loyall Subject, III, 6, 141; IV, 3, 
70; Wife for a Month, IV, 5, 38, 39. 



348 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Megra and her reply are wild, whirling, and vulgar 
rhetoric. The bawdy half -scene with its maid of 
easy honour is his; the discovery of the low intrigue, 
the simulated masque and the mob-scene are his. 
They may display, but they do not develop, characters. 
They are sometimes fanciful; sometimes gracefully 
poetic as in V, 3, 83-84, where his '' all your better 
deeds shall be in water writ, but this in marble " an- 
ticipates Keats's famous epitaph; sometimes realistic; 
but they lack the perv^ading emotion, imagination, ele- 
vation of Beaumont. The play, in fact, is not only 
preponderatingly but primarily Beaumont's, from the 
excellent exposition in the first act to the series of 
sensational surprises which precede the denouement in 
the fifth. The conception of the characters and the 
complication are distinctive of that writer's plots : the 
impulsive, misjudged, and misguided hero, his violence 
toward the love-lorn maiden disguised as a page, and 
his unwarranted suspicion of the honour of his mis- 
tress. The subtle revelations of personality are 
Beaumont's: the simplicity, self-renunciation, lyric 
pathos and beauty of Bellario, the nobler aspects of 
Dion, the maidenly audacities, sweet bewilderments 
and unmerited tribulations of Arethusa, the combina- 
tion of idyllic, pathetic, and romantic, the visualization, 
the naturalness of figure and setting, the vigour of 
dramatic progress, the passion, the philosophical in- 
sights, and the memorable lines. His, too, the humour 
of the rural sketches — the Country Fellow who has 
" seen something yet," the occasional frank animality, 
as well as the tender beauty of innocence. Not only 
are the virtues of the play Beaumont's but some of 



DATE OF " THE MAIDES TRAGEDY " 349 

its faults of conception and construction; and those 
faults are the unmanly suspicious startings of the hero 
and his melodramatic violence, the somewhat fortu- 
itous succession of the crises, and the subordination of 
Bellario in the denouement. 

The popularity of Philaster as an acting play, not 
only at Court but in the city, is attested by contem- 
porary record. It was played after the Restoration 
with success; and between 1668 and 181 7 it enjoyed 
thirteen revivals, — the last at Bath on December 12 
of the latter year, with Ward in the title-role and Miss 
Jarmin as Bellario.^ 

8. — The M aides Tragedy, acted by the King's Men 
during the festivities at Court, October 161 2 to 
March 161 3, was known to Sir George Buc when, 
October 31, 161 1, he licensed an anonymous play as 
" this second maiden's tragedy." It was acted by 
the King's also at Blackfriars; and since it is in every 
way a more mature production than Philaster, I think 
that it followed that play, toward the end of 16 10 or 
in 161 1. It was first published in 1619, in quarto 
and anonymously. The quarto of 1622 is also anony- 
mous; that of 1630 gives the names of Beaumont and 
Fletcher as authors. In the commendatory verses to 
the folio of 1647, Henry Howard ascribes the scene 
of Amintor's suicide to Fletcher; Waller assigns to 
him " brave Melantius in his gallantry " and " Aspatia 

1 The best editions of Philaster since the time of Dyce are 
those of F. S. Boas, in the Temple Dramatists (1898), P. A. 
Daniel, in the Variorum (1904), Glover and Waller, in the Camb. 
Engl. Classics (1905), and A. H. Thorndike in Belles Lettres 
(1906). 



350 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

weeping in her gown " ; Stanley, too, gives him the 
weeping Aspatia ; and Herrick, " Evadne swelling with 
brave rage." These descriptions are as misleading 
as blind. D'Avenant comes nearer the mark in his 
Prologue to The Woman-Hater, already quoted, 
where he indicates correctly an Evadne scene and an 
Aspatia scene as of Fletcher's composition. Metrical 
tests, corrected by the rhetorical, show that Fletcher's 
contributions are limited to three scenes and two half- 
scenes. The list opens with those to which D'Ave- 
nant alludes : II, 2, in which Fletcher *' taught the sad 
Aspatia how to mourn," and IV, i (as far as line 
200, " Prithee, do not mock me "), in which he " re- 
duced Evadne from her scorn " ; and it includes, also, 
the ten lines of V, i, the larger part of V, 2 (to 
Exit Evadne), and the perfunctory V, 3. As to 
Fletcher's authorship of II, 2 no doubt can be enter- 
tained. It is an admirable example of his double 
endings (almost 40 per cent), his end-stopped lines 
(80 per cent), anapaestic rhythms and jolts, as well 
as of his vocabulary, his favourite figures and his in- 
cremental second thoughts. I fail to see how any 
critic can assign it to Beaumont.^ As frequently with 
Fletcher, Aspatia's mourning, though beautiful, is a 
falsetto from the classics; more like one of Rossetti's 
or Leigh Hunt's poetic descriptions of a picture than a 
first-hand reproduction of nature and passion. There 
is likewise no doubt concerning the authorship of the 
first part of Act IV, i (lines 1-189), in which Me- 

1 Thorndike, for instance, — who selects lines 22-40 as an in- 
stance of Beaumont's skill in imitating natural conversation. 
Influence of B. and F. on Shakespeare, p. 129. 



SHARE IN ''THE MAIDES TRAGEDY" 351 

lantius convinces Evadne of sin and drives her to 
vengeance upon the King. The latter part of the 
scene, also, appears to have been written by Fletcher 
in the first instance, and to have consisted of the first 
six speeches after the entrance of Amintor (lines 
190-200), Evadne's "I have done nothing good to 
win belief" (247-254, 260-262), and the conclusion 
(263-285). But between Amintor's supplication 
" Prithee do not mock me" (line 200) and Evadne's 
assertion of sincerity " I have done nothing good to 
win belief " (line 247 ^), Beaumont has inserted four 
speeches that of themselves convert a colloquy other- 
wise histrionic and mechanical into one of the tender- 
est passages of the play. In Evadne's *' My whole 
life is so leprous it infects All my repentance " — 
" That slight contrition " — " Give me your griefs ; you 
are an innocent, A soul as white as Heaven " — " Shoot 
your light into me " — " Dissembling with my tears " 
— " Cut from man's remembrance," we hear the words, 
phrases, and figures of Beaumont; and we trace him 
in the repeated use of " do." We find him in Amin- 
tor's " Seed of virtue left to shoot up " — " put a thou- 
sand sorrows off " — " that dull calamity " — " that 
strange misbelief " — and in 

Mock not the poivers above that can and dare 
Give thee a great example of their justice 
To all ensuing ages.^ 

And in five verses of Evadne's succeeding asseveration 
I Numbering of the Variorum. 2 q^ " eies." 



352 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

of sincere reform (255-259), we are thrilled by his 
sudden magic and his poetic finality : 

Those short days I shall number to my rest 
(As many must not see me) shall, though too late, 
Though in my evening, yet perceive a will, — 
Since I can do no good, because a woman, — 
Reach constantly at something that is near it. 

The ground-work of this latter portion, from Amin- 
tor's entrance, where Evadne cries " Oh, my lord," 
" My much abused lord," and he, " I may leap. Like 
a hand-wolf, into my natural wildness " (lines 190- 
200) ; and the last three speeches in general with 
Amintor's '* My frozen soul melts," and '' My honour 
falls no farther : I am well, then " ; and with Evadne's 
"tales" that "go to dust forgotten," — the Niobe 
weeping till she is water, — the " wash her stains 
away," and 

All the creatures 
Made for Heaven's honours, have their ends, and good 

ones, — 
All but the cozening crocodiles, false women — 
They reign here like those plagues, those killing sores, 
Men pray against; ... 

this remainder belongs, in verse no less than in dic- 
tion, to the scene as Fletcher originally wrote it. 

When to these two scenes we add the first and third 
of Act V, which are of no particular significance, and 
the second (to the death of the King), we have 
Fletcher's whole written contribution to this wonder- 
ful tragedy. In the murder of the King he displays 



SHARE IN " THE MAIDES TRAGEDY " 353 

dramatic mastery of the grisly and shuddering; but 
though the scene is characterized by the same rapidity 
of conversational thrust and parry as the Fletcherian 
dialogue between Melantius and Evadne, it is, like 
it, marred in effect by violence physical rather than 
spiritual, by brutality of vituperation and stage real- 
ism with but scant relief of subtlety. Fletcher's 
tragic scenes excel not in portrayal of personality 
but in business; his contribution to Aspatia is not 
pathos but the embroidery of grief. 

The volume and essential vitality are Beaumont's: 
the cruel desertion of Aspatia, her lyric self -oblitera- 
tion and desperate rush on fate; the artful revelation 
of Evadne's character, of her duplicity, her effrontery, 
her shamelessness ; the stirrings of a soul within her, 
its gradual recognition of the inevitable, — that un- 
chastity cannot be atoned even by vengeance, nor 
cleansed by blood, — and its true birth through love 
desired to love achieved in death; the bewilderment 
of the innocent but shuffling hero, blinded by circum- 
stance and besotted by loyalty to the lustful author 
of his wrongs, — yet idealized by virgin and wanton 
alike; the spiritual elevation of Melantius, and the 
conflict between honour and friendship, pride and 
sacrifice, which ennobles the comradeship of that 
blunt soldier with the deluded Amintor; the pestilent 
King; and Calianax, the poltroon whose braggadocio 
is part humorous and part cunning, but all helpless and 
hopeless. These are Beaumont's; and his, too, the 
wealth of dramatic situation and device: the enthrall- 
ing exposition, the silver sound and ecstasy of the 
masque in the first act; the shrewd development of mo- 



354 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

tive, and the psychic revolutions of movement in the 
second and third acts; whatever of tenderness or of in- 
tricate compHcation the fourth displays — in fact, all 
that is not palpable violence. His, the breathless sus- 
pense and the swiftly urgent, unexpected sensations 
that crowd the last scene of the fifth and crown the 
catastrophe; and his, the gleaming epigram and the 
poetic finality. 

In his Tragedies of the Last Age, licensed in 1677, 
Rymer attacked The Maides Tragedy violently for its 
lack of unity, unnaturalness, improbability of plot, 
and inconsistency of delineation. Perhaps, as Rymer 
insisted, the title is a misnomer: perhaps the play 
might better have been called Amintor, or the Lust fid 
King, or The Concubine. But The Maides Tragedy 
is a more attractive name, and it may be justified. 
For I do not find that the action is double-centred. 
It springs entirely out of Amintor's desertion of the 
Maid for a woman whom he speedily discovers to be 
' bed-fellow ' to the King. The pathetic devotion of 
Aspatia is essential to our understanding of Amin- 
tor's tragic weakness, his hamartia. His failure to 
act in accordance with the dictates of honour toward 
Aspatia is prophetic of the indecision that costs him 
the respect of Evadne, nay extinguishes that first 
flicker of love which then was but desire. Vile 
as she was, she would have kissed the sin off from 
his lips if on their wedding-night he had unquestion- 
ingly slain the man to whom she had sold herself. 
The Nemesis, too, of Amintor is not Evadne nor the 
King, but Aspatia, thrust out of mind though not for- 
gotten : 



"THE MAIDES TRAGEDY" 355 

I did that lady wrong. Methinks I feel 

A griefe shoot suddenly through all my veins, — ^ 

.... The faithless sin I made 
To f aire Aspatia is not yet revenged ; 
It follows me. — ^ 

His Nemesis is Aspatia, constant unto death, — and 
in her death, awakening such remorse that he must 
die to be with her : " Aspatia ! " he cries — 



The soule is fled forever, and I wrong 

Myselfe so long to lose her company, 

Must I talke now ? Heres to be with thee, love ! * 

Rymer's criticism and that of a recent essayist,* of 
" the irrelevance of the motives that Beaumont em- 
ploys " in the characterization and conduct of Evadne 
have logicality of appearance, but are based upon 
incorrect premises. The facts, as Beaumont gives 
them, are that Evadne was " once fair " and " chastely 
sw^eet," — before she met the King; that she was al- 
ready corrupt when she took Amintor as her husband ; 
that her " delicacy of feeling " after the marriage, in 
presence of her Ladies of the Bedchamber, is an as- 
sumed delicacy ; that she loves the King " with ambi- 
tion not with her eyes" (HI, i) ; that she "would 
bend to any one that won his throne " ; that she has 
accepted Amintor as a screen, but speedily lusts for 
him, and is willing to give herself to him if he will 
forthright kill the King (11, i, 179) : 

^n, I, 127. 
2 III, I, 221. 
3V, 3, 244. 
* P. E. More, The Nation, N. Y., April 24, 1913. 



356 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Wilt thou kill this man? 
Sweare, my Amintor, and Tie kisse the sin 
Off from thy lips. 

But Amintor is cautious and obliquely conscientious, 
not the kind of man to satisfy her new desire, and 
ambition too. He could never win her by winning 
the throne, — too lily-livered: 

" I wonnot swearCj sweet love," says he, " till I do know 
the cause " ; — 

Then she, with passion " I wood thou wouldst." — But 
she is a woman whose first behest is scorned ; and with 
sudden revulsion of contempt for this poltroon, as 
she now conceives him — 

Why, it is thou that wrongst me; I hate thee; 
Thou shouldst have kild thy selfe. 

Amintor has lost his evil chance. She despises him 
and yet, in her better moments, with a kind of pity. 
It follows that her prompt avowal of her liaison, and 
her return to the King and insulting treatment of 
Amintor are of a piece with the corrupted nature of 
the woman, — a nature that she displays up to the 
moment of her awakening and imagined repentance. 
The facts are, too, that she does not, immediately 
after she has sworn to her brother to let the foul soul 
of the King out, develop (IV, i), as Mr. More thinks, 
a ** mood of sudden and overwhelming love for Amin- 
tor." She merely asks his pardon: 

I doe appeare the same, the same Evadne, 
Drest in the shames I liv'd in, the same monster, 



"THE MAIDES TRAGEDY" 357 

But these are names of honour to what I am .... 

I am hell 
Till you, my deare lord, shoot your light into me. 
The beames of you?- forgivenesse. 

The days that she shall number to her rest are short; 
but she vainly imagines that, though but " one minute " 
remains, she may " reach constantly at something that 
is neare " the good. She is awakened to her hus- 
band's whiteness of soul; but she makes no profession 
of love, though love, this time not merely lust, be 
stirred in her heart. She would not " let her sins 
perish his noble youth." At last, in the moment of 
mad exaltation after the murder of the King, when 
she thinks that she has w^ashed her soul clean in that 
blood, the poor, misguided creature struggling toward 
the light, but still, and consistently, enveloped in the 
murk of her past, comes imploring the love of the 
husband whom in the earlier days she had scorned. 
She is still the passionate Evadne, who " was too foule 
within to looke faire then," and " was not free till 
now." Repulsed by Amintor, she dreams the one 
sane madness of her career, — to win his love by tak- 
ing leave of Hfe, — and kills herself. 

I perceive no irrelevance of motive in the conduct 
of Evadne; even in the scenes which are not Beau- 
mont's — namely, the expostulation of her brother, 
and the murder of the King. Nor do I find in the 
play as a whole what Mr. More calls an " incompre- 
hensible tangle of the passions." 

The defect in the construction of the Maides Trag- 
edy, if there is one, lies in the failure of the Maid 
and her deserter to meet between the first scene of 



358 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

the second act and the third of the fifth. That is 
not unmotived, however; it is of Aspatia's own choos- 
ing and of Amintor's hamartia. Aspatia kisses him 
farewell, forgiving him, and saying that she " must 
trie Some yet unpractis'd way to grieve and die." 
He is, forthwith, entangled in the web of his wife's 
adultery, his own shame and more shameful delusion 
of allegiance. The girl whom he has so deeply 
wronged passes from his distracted consciousness, 
save for the sense that these troubles are his punish- 
ment. And when, toward the end of the play, the 
Maid comes in again, saying " this is my fatall houre," 
even we start at the remembrance that she had threat- 
ened to kill herself. And, because the scene in which 
she forces a duel upon Amintor is spirited and pathetic, 
his contrition poignant, and the joy of their reunion in 
the moment of death deeply tragic, we feel that we 
have been unduly cheated of the company of this inno- 
cent and resolute and surpassingly pathetic girl. 

The play, with Burbadge in the role of Melantius, 
was popular during the lives of the authors. It was 
acted before the King and Queen in 1636 and it held 
the stage until the closing of the theatres. It was 
revived in 1660 and 1661. Pepys saw it at least five 
times before the middle of May 1668, and found it 
" too sad and melancholy " but still " a good play." It 
was popular when Dryden in his Essay on Dramatick 
Poesy, 1668, praised its " labyrinth of design." For 
a time during the reign of Charles II it wa's pro- 
scribed, possibly because the moral was too readily 
applicable to the conduct of the " merry monarch " ; 
but the play in its original form was on the stage again 



HIS SHARE IN " CUPID'S REVENGE " 359 

by 1677. Before 1685 Waller made at least two 
attempts to change it from tragedy to tragicomedy 
by writing a new fifth act in which Evadne was 
bloodlessly eliminated. In one of these sentimental 
absurdities the King alone survived; in another the 
King, preposterously reformed, succeeded in saving 
Amintor and Aspatia from suicide and joined them 
in marriage : but neither attempt, though made " to 
please the Court," was crowned with success. The 
play enjoyed several other revivals in the first half of 
the eighteenth century with high popularity, notably 
at the Haymarket in 1706 when Melantius was played 
by Betterton, Evadne by Mrs. Barry, and Aspatia by 
Mrs. Bracegirdle; and again in 1710 just before Bet- 
terton's death. In 1742 Theobald writes, that the 
famous controversy between Melantius and Amintor 
is always "received wath vehement applause." In 
1837 the play was acted by Macready at the Haymar- 
ket, with alterations by himself and three original 
scenes by Sheridan Knowles, under the name of The 
Bridal, and, as Dyce tells us, was very favourably re- 
ceived by the public.^ 

9. — Though the tragedy of Cupid's Revenge was 
printed in 161 5 as the work of Fletcher alone, the 
publication was unauthorized, and the attribution is 
by a printer who acknowledges that he was not ac- 
quainted with the author. The quarto of 1630 as- 
signs it correctly to Beaumont and Fletcher. The 

1 The best editions of M. T., since the time of Dyce, are those 
of P. A. Daniel, in the Variorum (1904), Glover and Waller, in 
the Cambridge English Classics (1905), and A. H. Thorndike, in 
the Belles Lettres (1906). 



36o BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

play is known to have been acted at Court by her 
Majesty's Children of Whitefriars, the first Sunday 
in January 1612; and as usual it must have been 
tested by public presentation before that date. The 
fact that the authors were, between 1610 and 1612, 
writing for the King's Men does not preclude their 
composing a play for the Queen's Children. It is 
not, therefore, necessary to date the writing earlier 
than 161 1. Though the critics disagree concerning 
the precise division of authorship in nearly every scene, 
finding traces of alteration by Field, Massinger, and 
others, they discern a definite substratum of both 
Fletcher and Beaumont. It is unnecessary to specify 
the minor scenes in which Beaumont cooperated. The 
five which transfer the action from an atmosphere of 
supernatural caprice and sordid irresponsibility to the 
realm of character, moral struggle, pathos, or passion 
are by him.^ In these his sententious sunbursts, his 
verse, diction, hyperbole, portrayal by passive implica- 
tion, are indubitable. The infatuation of the princess 
for the dwarf takes on a human interest in the grim 
humility and cackling mirth of the latter. The lust of 
Leucippus is transfigured to nobility by his loyalty to 
oaths ^' bestowed on lies," by his horror of the dis- 
covered baseness of his paramour, and the piety with 
which he implores that she-devil to spare his father's 
honour : 

I desire you 

To lay what trains you will for my wish'd death, 

But suffer him to find his quiet grave 

In peace. 

iI,3;II, 2;III, 2;IV, i; V. 4. 



HIS SHARE IN "KING AND NO KING" 361 

The treacherous greed and malice of Bacha are tem- 
pered by half-Hghts and shifting hues that make her 
less a vampire when Beaumont depicts her. And the 
final scene of tragedy in the forest is shot with pathos 
by the " harmless innocence " of Beaumont's Urania 
following Leucippus to save him 

for love : — 
I would not let you know till I was dying; 
For you could not love me, my mother was so naught. 

But the play as a whole lacks logical and natural mo- 
tive, moral vigor and vitality; and its history upon 
the stage is negligible. 

10. — Of the dates of ^ King and No King there 
is no doubt. It was licensed in 161 1, acted at Court 
December 26 of the same year, and first published 
in quarto in 16 19 as by Beaumont and Fletcher. In 
the commendatory verses of 1647, Henry Howard 
gives Arbaces to' Fletcher; Jasper Mayne gives him 
Bessus; Herrick goes further: ''that high design Of 
King and No King, and the rare plot thine." Earle, 
on the other hand, gives Bessus to Beaumont; and 
Lisle gives him Mardonius. Of the attributions to 
Fletcher, Herrick's alone has plausibility, since, like 
Philaster and The Maides Tragedy, the play is de- 
rived from nO' known source.^ Still he was probably 
Avrong. It is not impossible that one of the dramatists 
contrived the plot ; but, considering that three-quarters 
of the play was written by Beaumont, and that Flet- 

1 For conjectural sources see Chapter VII, above. The best 
editions to-day are the Variorum and Alden's {Belles Lettres). 



362 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

cher's quarter contains but one scene at once of 
high design and vital to the story, it is not very Hkely 
that the contriving was by Fletcher unaided. 

Modern critics display singular unanimity in their 
discrimination of the respective shares of the com- 
posers. With only one or two dissenting voices they 
attribute to Beaumont the first three acts, the fourth 
scene of the fourth, and scenes two and four of the 
fifth. To Fletcher they assign the first three scenes 
of the fourth act, and scenes one and three of the 
fifth. The tests which I have already described lead 
me to the same conclusion. Beaumont's contribution 
is distinguished by a largeness of utterance and a 
poetic inevitability, a diversity and mastery of char- 
acterization, a philosophical reach, a realism both hu- 
morous and terrible, and a power of dramatic creativ- 
ity and tension, equal to, if not surpassing, any par- 
allel elements or qualities to be found in the joint-plays. 
Arbaces, in apparent design, is of a Marlowan temper, 
moody, vainglorious, blinded by self-love, and brook- 
ing no rebuke; but he is not merely a braggart and 
a tyrant, he is brave in fact, and in heart deluded by 
the assumption that he is also modest. The combina- 
tion is Beaumontesque. That dramatist rarely creates 
fixed or transparent character. Arbaces assumes that 
he is single of nature and aim: an irresistible, passion- 
less, and patient soldier; but his failure to fathom 
himself as his friend Mardonius fathoms him, is part 
of his complexity. His headlong love for the woman 
whom he believes to be his sister and the resulting 
horror of apprehension and conflict of desire reveal 
him in many-sided dilatation and in swift-succeeding 



HIS SHARE IN "KING AND NO KING" 363 

revolutions of personality. *' What are thou," he 
asks of this devilish unexpected lust — 

What are thou, that dost creep into my breast ; 
And dar'st not see my face? 

When he will decree that Panthea be regarded as no 
more his sister, and she remonstrates, — he thunders 
" I will hear no more " ; but to himself : — 

Why should there be such music in a voice, 
And sin for me to hear it? 

When Tigranes, to whom he has offered that sister 
in marriage, presumes to address her, with what ma- 
jestic inconsistency the king rebukes him : 

The least word that she speaks 

Is worth a life. Rule your disorder'd tongue 

Or I will temper it ! 

And so, now struggling, now wading on in sin, till 
that heart-rending crisis is reached in which he con- 
fesses the incestuous love to his friend and faithful 
general, Mardonius ; nay, even tries to win the friend's 
support in his lustful suit, and is gloriously defeated. 
Then follow the easy compliance of Bessus with his 
wish, and, with equal precipitancy, the revulsion of a 
kingly sense of rectitude against the willing pander : 

Thou art too wicked for my company, 
Though I have hell within me, and mayst yet 
Corrupt me further, 

The climax in which Arbaces can no longer refrain 
is of Beaumont's best: 



364 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Nay, you shall hear the cause in short, Panthea ; 
And when thou hear'st it, thou will blush for me 
And hang thy head down like a violet 
Full of the morning's dew. 

And she, recoiling, "Heaven forbid" and "I would 
rather ... in a grave sleep with my innocence," still 
kisses him ; and then in a panic, nobler than self-sup- 
pression, cries: 

If you have any mercy, let me go 
To prison, to my death, to anything: 
I feel a sin growing upon my blood 
Worse than all these ! 

By a series of sensational honleversements, and in a 
dramatic agony of suspense, we are keyed to the scene 
in which relief is granted: the princess who now is 
Queen is no sister to the King, who is now no King. 
With the exception of a half-scene (Act IV, 2^) 
of somewhat bustling mechanism and rant by Fletcher, 
the whole of the King's portrayal is Beaumont's; 
and with the exception of eighty lines written by 
Fletcher (Act IV, i) of dramatic dialogue contain- 
ing information necessary to the minor love-affair, 
the story of the birdlike quivering, fond Panthea is,, 
also, entirely Beaumont's. The Mardonius of Beau- 
mont, in the first three acts and the fifth, is a 
fine, honest, blunt, soldierly companion and adviser 
to the King; but when Fletcher takes him in hand 
(Act IV, 2^), he declines to a stock character wordy 
with alliteration and commonplace. The Bessus of 
Beaumont whose " reputation came principally by 
thinking to run away " is, in Acts I-III, Falstafifian or 



HIS SHARE IN "KING AND NO KING" 365 

Zagloban; the Bessus of Fletcher, in IV, 3 and V, i 
and 3, is a figure of low comedy, amusing to be sure, 
and reminiscent of Bobadill, but a purveyor of sopho- 
moric quips and a tool for horse-play. The rural 
scene with its graphic humours of the soil is Beau- 
mont's. 

Fletcher's slight contribution to this otherwise mas- 
terly play consists, in brief, of facile dramatic dia- 
logue, rhetorical ravings, stop-gaps complementary to 
the plot, and farce unrelated to it. His scenes display 
no spiritual insight; supply no development of char- 
acter; administer no dramatic fillip to the action and 
no thrill to the spectator; and, exclusive of one rhetor- 
ically-coloured colloquy between the minor lovers, 
Tigranes and Spaconia, they are devoid of poetry. 

To Beaumont, then, it may be said that we owe in 
the creation of A King and No King one of the most 
intensely powerful dramas of the Jacobean period, 
one of the most popular in the age of Dry den, and one 
of the most influential in the development of the heroic 
play of the Restoration. That it did not survive the 
eighteenth century is due not so much to the painful 
nature of the conflict presented as to the fact that it 
is " of that inferior sort of tragedies which " as Dry- 
den says *' end with a prosperous event." The con- 
flict of motives, the passions aroused, have overpassed 
the limits of artistic mediation. The play would better 
have ended in a catastrophe of undeserved suffering 
— that highest kind of tragedy, inevitable and inex- 
plicable. But though this be a spoiled tragedy, it is 
not, as many assert, an immoral tragicomedy. That 
error arises from a careless reading of the text. From 



366 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

the first, the spectator is led to divine that the protag- 
onists are not brother and sister. And as for the 
protagonists themselves, — v^hen the King is sud- 
denly smitten by love (III, i, 70-115) and rebels 
against its power, he does not even know that the 
object of his devotion is his supposed sister. When 
he is informed that the conquering beauty is Panthea, 
he revolts, crying '' 't is false as Hell ! " And when 
the twain are enmeshed in the strands of circumstance 
they cease not to recognize the liberating possibility 
of self-denial. In his struggle against what seems to 
him incestuous love, though the King does not conquer, 
he, still, not for a moment loses the consciousness of 
what is right. His deepest despair is that he is " not 
come so high as killing" himself rather than succumb 
to worse temptation; and his last word before the 
tragic knot is cut is of loathing for " such a strange 
and unbelieved affection as good men cannot think 
on." And when Panthea feeling the " sin growing 
upon her blood," learns the irony of high resolve throt- 
tled by infirmity, it is still her soul, unstrangled, that 
cries to him whom she thinks her brother, " Fly, sir, 
for God's sake ! " 

A King and No King evidently won favour at 
Court, for, as we have noticed, it was acted there both 
in 161 1 and in 1612-1613. It was presented to their 
Majesties at Hampton Court in 1636. In 1661 Pepys 
saw it twice. Before 1682 Nell Gwynn had made 
Panthea one of her principal roles. In 1683 Better- 
ton played Arbaces to Mrs. Barry's Panthea. It was 
revived again in 1705, 1724, and 1788. Davies in 
his Dramatic Miscellany tells us that Garrick intended 



^ A KING AND NO KING '^ 367 

to revive it, taking the part of Arbaces himself and 
giving Bessus to Woodward, '' but it was observed that 
at every reading of it in the green-room Gar rick's 
pleasure suffered a visible diminution — at length he 
fairly gave up his design." Mr. Bond, in the 
Variorum edition, mentions a German adaptation of 
1785, called Ethelwolfj oder der Konig Kein Konig. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

THE LAST PLAY 

ELEVEN.— The first quarto of The Scornful 
Ladie, entered S. R., March 19, 1616, assigns the 
play to Beaumont and Fletcher, and says that it " was 
acted with great applause by the Children of Her Mai- 
esties Revels in the Blacke Fryers." The references in 
Act V, 3, 4, to the Cleve wars show that it could not 
have been written before March 25, 1609. The sen- 
tence, " Marry some cast Cleve captain," is taken by 
some to indicate a date as early as the spring of that 
year, when James I " promised to send an English force 
to aid the Protestant party," ^ and when, undoubtedly, 
" cast " captains of the English army were clamouring 
for foreign service. In that case, the play was acted 
before January 4, 16 10, for by that date the children 
of the Queen's Revels had ceased playing at Black- 
friars. Since the plague regulations closed the thea- 
tres between March 9 and December 7, 1609, save 
for a week in July, these arguments would fix the per- 
formance in the Christmas month, December 7 to 
January 4, 16 10. To this supposition a reference in 
Act I, 2 to binding the Apocrypha by itself, lends 
plausibility, if, as Fleay thinks, the sentence points 

1 Murray, Eng. Dram. Comp., I, 153 ; Warwick Bond, Variorum 
Ed. of B. and F., I, 359. 

368 



THE LAST PLAY 369 

to the discussion during 1609-1610 concerning the in- 
clusion of the Apocrypha in the Douay version of the 
Bible and its exclusion from the authorized version 
— both in progress at the time, and both completed 
in 1610.^ But the Apocrypha controversy was con- 
tinued long after 16 10. 

A later date of composition than January 4, 16 10, 
is, however, indicated if a line, III, i, 341, to which 
attention has not previously been directed, in which 
the Elder Loveless says of Abigail, who is acting 
the termagant, " tie your she-Otter up, good Lady 
foHy, she stinks worse than a Bear-baiting," was 
suggested by the termagant Mrs. Otter and her hus- 
band of the Bear-garden, in Jonson's Epicoene, acted 
between January 4 and March 10, 1610. And the 
two sentences in which Cleve is mentioned, " There 
will be no more talk of the Cleve wars while this 
lasts" (V, 3), and ''Marry some cast Cleve captain 
[so italicized in the quarto], and sell Bottle-ale" 
(V, 4), point to a date later than July 1610, when 
actual fighting in Cleves-Juliers had barely begun. The 
captains are not English soldiers seeking service in a 
foreign army not yet mobilized, but Englishmen who 
have been captains in Cleves, have seen service, and 
been * cast,' any time between July 1610 and the begin- 
ning of 1 61 6, when, according to the quarto, the play 
had assuredly been performed. These considerations 
make it probable that The Scornful Ladie in its origi- 
nal form was presented first at White friars while the 
Queen's Children were acting there, between 16 10 and 
March 161 3, or that it was one of the plays, old 

1 Chr. Eng. Dr., I, i8i. 



370 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

or new, presented by the Queen's Children (re- 
organized in 1 614) when they opened at Rossiter's 
new Blackfriars in 161 5-16. 

Since active hostihties in Cleves were temporarily 
suspended in 161 3-14 during the negotiations which led 
to the treaty of Xanten in November of the latter year, 
and since there would not only be much '' talk " rather 
than fighting at the time, but also many captains ' cast ' 
from their regiments, the conviction grows that the 
play was written between 161 3 and the end of 161 5. 
If The Scornful Ladie had been written before March 
161 3, it would undoubtedly have shared with The 
Coxcomhe and Cupid's Revenge of the same authors, 
then in the flush of popularity at Court, the honour of 
presentation by the Queen's Revels' Children during 
the festivities attending the marriage of the Princess 
Elizabeth; for it was always a good acting play, and 
it has far greater merit than Cupid's Revenge which 
the Children performed three times before royalty in 
the four months preceding the marriage. 

Other evidence, not hitherto noticed, still further 
confirms the conclusion that this was one of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher's later joint-productions, perhaps 
the last of them. The conversational style is alto- 
gether more mature than in the remaining output of 
their partnership. It is the first work published under 
both of their names, and it was licensed for publication 
within two weeks after Beaumont's death, as one 
might expect of a play with which he was associated 
recently in the public mind. It is the only one of the 
joint-plays which he did not himself copy out, or 
thoroughly revise in manuscript, eliminating all or 



THE LAST PLAY 371 

nearly all of Fletcher's distinctive ye's and y' are's, 
and reducing to uniformity the nomenclature of the 
dramatis personae. Of this, later. There is also a 
sentence in Act III, 2, which points definitely to a 
date of composition, 1613 to 161 5. The Captain 
speaking to Morecraft, the usurer, says, " I will stile 
thee noble, nay Don Diego, I 'le woo thy Infanta for 
thee " (punctuation of the quarto). * Diego ' had, of 
course, been for years a generic nickname for Span- 
iards ; but Morecraft is neither a Spaniard nor in any 
way associated with Spaniards. There had been a 
Don Diego of malodorous memory, who had offen- 
sively " perfumed " St. Paul's and on whose achieve- 
ment the Elizabethans never wearied ringing the 
changes.^ But that Don Diego was of the years be- 
fore 1597 when there was, of course, no talk of woo- 
ing an Infanta; and the Captain here who comes to 
borrow money of the usurer had no intention of in- 
sulting him by likening him to the disgusting Spaniard 
of St. Paul's. 

The only provocation for styling Morecraft's 
* widow ' an Infanta in this scene of The Scornful 
Ladie is that there was much interest in London at 
the time in a proposed marriage between Charles, 
Prince of Wales, and the second daughter of Philip 
III of Spain, the Infanta Maria. And the conjunc- 
tion of the " Infanta " with a " Don Diego " has 
reference to the activities of the astute Don Diego Sar- 
miento de Acuna who had arrived as Spanish ambas- 

1 See Bond, Variorum, B. and F., I, 417; and references as 
given there, and by Dyce, to The Famous History of Sir Thomas 
Wyatt, The Captain, and other plays. 



372 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

sador, in 1613, "with the express object of winning 
James over from his alliance with France and the 
Protestant powers." ^ During 1613 Queen Anne was 
favouring the Spanish marriage. In February 1614, 
Don Diego Sarmiento was sedulously cultivating the 
acquaintance of the King's powerful minion, the Earl 
of Somerset ; and in May he was writing home of his 
success. In the latter month, the Lord Privy Seal, 
Northampton, was urging the marriage upon the 
King; and the King soon after had signified to Sar- 
miento his willingness to accept the hand of the In- 
fanta for Charles, provided Philip of Spain should 
withdraw his demand for the conversion of the young 
prince to Catholicism. In June Sarmiento was ad- 
vising Philip to close with James's offer. And a month 
or so later the Spanish Council of State had voted in 
favour of the match. Negotiations, broken off for a 
time, were resumed a few weeks after the treaty of 
Xanten was signed ; and with varying success Don 
Diego was still pursuing his object in December 161 5. 
The reference in The Scornful Ladie cannot possibly 
be to negotiations for the marriage of Prince Charles's 
elder brother, Henry, who died in 161 2, with one or 
the other of King Philip's daughters ; ^ as for instance 
in 1604 or 1607, for the Cleves wars had not then be- 
gun ; or in 161 1 and 1612, for no Don Diego had yet 
arrived in England. The upper limit of the reference 

1 See S. R. Gardiner, History of England, Vol. II (1607-1616), 
pp. 165, 218, 225, 247, 255, 316, 321, 324, 327, 368, for this and 
the following concerning Sarmiento. 

2 Gardiner, Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage, pp. 6, 
7, 69. 




Bv permission of Methuen & Co., Ltd. 



DON DIEGO SARMIENTO, 

COUNT GONDOMAR 

From the portrait by G. P. Harding 



THE LAST PLAY 373 

to Don Diego Sarmiento's negotiations is May 2j, 
1 613. Gardiner tells us, moreover, that " for some 
time " before Diego was created Count Gondomar in 
1 61 7 "he had been pertinaciously begging for a title 
that would satisfy the world that his labours had been 
graciously accepted by his master." This desire to be 
" stiled noble " was undoubtedly known to many about 
the Court. If Beaumont and Fletcher did not hear of 
it by common talk, they might readily have derived 
their information from Don Diego's acquaintance and 
Beaumont's friend. Sir Francis Bacon, Attorney-Gen- 
eral at the time, or from a devoted companion of 
John Selden of the Inner Temple, Sir Robert Cotton, 
the antiquary, who in April 161 5, was King James's 
intermediary with Sarmiento. Taking, accordingly, 
all these considerations into account in conjunction 
with the fact that no Cleves captains had yet been 
* cast ' from their commands abroad before the 
Queen's Revels' Children ceased playing at the old 
Blackfriars in January 16 10, I have come to the defi- 
nite conclusion that the play was written between 
May 2y, 161 3 and the beginning of 161 6, and first 
acted after the Children reopened at the new Black- 
friars in 161 5-1 6 1 6. The probabilities are that it was 
written after May or June, 16 14, perhaps, as late as 
April 161 5, when public attention had been startlingly 
awakened to Don Diego's personal and ambitious ac- 
tivity in furthering the Spanish alliance by a royal 
marriage; and that Beaumont's absence from London, 
probably at his wife's place in Kent, or the failing 
condition of his health, accounts for his subordinate 
share in the authorship, as well as for the incomplete 



374 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

revision of the text — a task evidently assumed by him 
in the preparation of the other plays planned and pro- 
duced in partnership with Fletcher. 

The commendatory verses of Stanley and Waller in 
the 1647 ^o^io give the play to Fletcher; and the 
greater part of it is Fletcher's. Beaumont has con- 
tributed the vivid exposition of Act I, i ; Act I, 2, with 
its legal phraseology and racy realism; and the jovial 
posset-scene of Act II, i, where Sir Roger's kindly 
pedantry is developed and the minor love-affair of 
Welford and Martha is introduced.^ Act II, i, has 
been given by most critics to Fletcher because of the 
feminine endings of its occasional verse; but Beau- 
mont could use feminine endings for humorous effect, 
and the diction and metal habit are distinctly his. He 
contributed also Act V, 2,^ where the hero finally 
tricks his scornful mistress into submission. The ye 
test, which I have said does not yield results in the 
case of other plays written by the two dramatists in 
collaboration, is of positive value here as confirming 
Beaumont's authorship of Act I, i and 2 and Act II, 

I, and V, 2, for but a single ye (II, i, 1. 10) is to be 
found in those scenes. The results are negative in Act 

II, 2 and 3 — no ye's — but the diction and verse are 
Fletcher's. It is not unlikely that Beaumont revised 
the play up to the end of Act 11. With Act III, the 
ye's are in evidence and continue to the end of the 
play, except in Beaumont's V, 2. In Act III, i, there 
are but four; but two of them are in the objective 

1 All critics agree in assigning I, i, to Beaumont. They differ 
concerning the rest of I and II. 

~ So, also, Fleay, G. C. Macaulay, and Oliphant; Boyle, A^. S. S. 
Trans., XXVI (1886), and Bond, u. s., p. 360. 



SHARE IN " THE SCORNFUL LADIE " 375 

case, a mark of Fletcher, not of Beaumont. On the 
other hand though the diction and verse somewhat 
resemble Fletcher's, the infrequency of the ye's height- 
ens the suspicion that unless the scene is Fletcher's, 
revised imperfectly by Beaumont, it is the work of 
some third author — perhaps, as R. W. Bond,^ has 
suggested, Massinger. Act HI, 2, on the other hand, 
not only has several ye's in the objective, but in pro- 
portion to the you's twenty-five per cent of ye's 
and y ares, which appproaches the distinctive habit of 
Fletcher; and the verse, rhetorical triplets, and after- 
thoughts are his. In all scenes of Acts IV and V, 
except the second of the latter, Fletcher's ye's occur, 
not in great number, but often enough in the objec- 
tive case to corroborate the other, metrical and stylis- 
tic, indications of his authorship. 

I have said that no ye's occur in Acts I and II, and 
Act V, 2, the parts in which Beaumont's hand as 
author or reviser appears. Another very interesting 
confirmation of his authorship of Act I, i. Act II, i, 
and Act V, 2, is afforded by the double nomenclature 
of one of the characters, the amorous spinster who 
serves as waiting- woman to the Scornful Lady. Ac- 
cording to the first three quartos (1616, 1625, 1630), 
and the folio (1679) which follows the text of these, 
whenever she appears in stage-direction or text before 
the beginning of Act III (viz., in Beaumont's scenes), 
she is called Mistress Younglove or Younglove, but 
in Acts III, IV, V, she is uniformly called Abigal, 
except in Beaumont's V, 2, where in the text and stage- 
direction (line 263) she is again Younglove. In the 

1 Variorum, I, 360. 



376 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

speech-headings, she is Abig. or Abi., all through the 
last three acts, for Fletcher has noticed that the ab- 
breviation Young, for her, occurring by the side of 
Young Lo. for another character. Young Loveless, is 
confusing. But Beaumont, who revised the first two 
acts, has been less careful than his wont, for he occa- 
sionally retains the Young., which stood for the name 
by which he always thought of the waiting- woman. 
Beaumont's Mistress Younglove of the earlier 
scenes is vividly vulgar and amorous. Fletcher takes 
her up and turns her into a commonplace stage lecher 
in petticoats; but Beaumont, in the fifth act, restores 
her to womanhood by giving her something of a heart. 
The Scornful Lady of Beaumont's scenes is self-pos- 
sessed and many-sided, introspective and capable of 
affection. In Fletcher's hands she is shrewd and 
witty but evidently constructed for the furtherance 
of dramatic business. The steward, Savil, of Beau- 
mont's Act I, appears not only to be honest but to be 
designed with a view to a leading part in the complica- 
tion ; in Act II, 2, Fletcher reduces him to drunkenness 
and servility, with slight regard to the possibilities of 
character and plot. The brisk but mechanical move- 
ment of the action and the stagey characterization and 
more animated scenes are Fletcher's ; also the ma- 
noeuvers directed against the Lady's attitude of scorn, 
except that by which she is overcome. Thorndike 
calls this comedy " perhaps the best representation of 
the collaboration " of these dramatists in that kind. 
If this is the best of which they were capable in that 
kind, it is as well that they did not produce more. 
This was written after Beaumont had retired to Sun- 



" THE SCORNFUL LADIE " 377 

dridge Place, and was giving very little attention to 
play-writing. It was, however, a very popular play; 
frequently acted before suppression of the theatres, 
and in the decade succeeding the Restoration when it 
was several times witnessed by Pepys. Later, it was 
acted by Mrs. Oldfield; and, as The Capricious Lady 
(an alteration by W. Cooke), with Mrs. Abington in 
the heroine's part, it held the stage as late as 1788 — 
some six revivals in all. But, as Sir Adolphus Ward 
says, it is ^' coarse both in design and texture, and 
seems hardly entitled to rank high among English 
comedies." It undoubtedly suggested ideas for Mas- 
singer's tragicomedy, A Very Woman, licensed 16341 
but in which Fletcher may have had a share; and for 
Sir Aston Cockayne's The Obstinate Lady of 1657.^ 

iThe best editions of The Scornful Ladie since Dyce's time 
are that of R. Warwick Bond, in the Variorum, and of Glover 
and Waller in the Camb. Engl. Classics. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

THE DRAMATIC ART, PRINCIPALLY OF BEAUMONT 

OF the eleven plays, then, from which one ma}^ 
try to draw conclusions concerning the respective 
dramatic qualities of Beaumont and Fletcher during 
the period of their collaboration, we have found that 
two, Loves Cure and The Captaine, do not definitely 
show the hand of Beaumont, and one. The Foiire 
Playes, but the suspicion of a finger. Two, The 
Woman-Hater and The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 
are wholly or essentially of his unaided authorship. 
The remaining six. The Coxcombe, Philaster, The 
Maides Tragedy', Cupids Revenge, A King and No 
King, The Scornful Ladie, are the Beaumont-Fletcher 
plays. Others in which some critics think that they 
have found traces of Beaumont, assuming that in their 
present form they are revisions of earlier work, are 
Thierry and Theodoret, The Faithfid Friends, Wit 
at Several! Weapons, Beggers Bush, Loves Pilgrim- 
age, The Knight of Malta, The Lawes of Candy, The 
Honest Man's Fortune, Bonduca, Nice Valour, The 
Noble Gentleman, The Faire Maide of the Inne. 
These I have carefully examined, and can conscien- 
tiously state that in no instance is there for me satis- 
factory evidence of the qualities which mark his 
verse and style. When in any of the suspected pas- 

378 



HIS DRAMATIC ART 379 

sages the verse recalls Beaumont, the style is not his : 
I find none of his favourite words, phrases, figures, 
ideas. When in any such passage a Beaumontesque 
hyperbole appears, or an occasional word from his 
vocabulary, or a line of haunting beauty such as he 
might have written, his metre or rhythm is absent. 
On the other hand, such passages display traits never 
found in him but often found in some other collab- 
orator with Fletcher, or in some reviser of Fletcher's 
plays, sometimes Massinger but more frequently 
Field. The latter dramatist modeled himself upon 
Beaumont, but though he caught, on occasion, some- 
thing of the master's trick, no one steeped in the style 
of Beaumont can for a moment mistake for his even 
the most dramatic or poetic composition of Field. 
As to the scenes in prose supposed by some to have 
been written by Beaumont, there is not one that bears 
his distinctive impress, nor one that might not have 
been written by Daborne, Field, or Massinger, or by 
any of the half-dozen experts whose industry swelled 
the output of the Fletcher ian syndicate. There being 
no evidence of Beaumont in any of these plays, it is 
unnecessary to investigate, here, the vexed question of 
the original date of each. Suffice it to repeat that 
concerning none is there definite or generally accepted 
information that it was written before Beaumont's 
retirement from dramatic activity. 

Passing in review, the qualities of Beaumont as a 
dramatist we find that in characterization he is, when 
at his best, true to nature, gradual in his processes, 
and discriminating in delineation. He is melodra- 
matic at times in sudden shifts of crisis; but he is uni- 



38o BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

formly sensitive to innocence, beauty, and pathos, — 
contemptuous of cowardice, braggadocio, and insin- 
cerity, — appreciative of fidelity, friendship, noble af- 
fection, womanly devotion, self-sacrifice, and mercy, 
of romantic enterprise, and of the virile defiance of 
calumny, evil soliciting, and tyranny. In the delinea- 
tion of lust he is frankly Elizabethan rather than 
insidiously Jacobean. He portrays with special ten- 
derness the maiden of pure heart whose love is un- 
fortunately placed too high, a Bellario, Euphrasia, 
or Urania, — or crossed by circumstance, a Viola, 
Arethusa, Aspatia, Panthea. He distinctively appro- 
priates Shakespeare's girl-page; under his touch her 
grace suffers but slight diminution, and that by ex- 
cess of sentimentality rather than by lack of individual 
endowment. His love-lorn lasses are integral per- 
sonalities. No one, not maintaining a thesis, could 
mistake Viola with her shrewd inventiveness and sense 
of humour for Arethusa, or Arethusa with her swift 
despairs for Bellario, or Bellario with her fearlessness 
and noble mendacity for the countrified Urania, pr 
any of them for the lachrymose Aspatia, or the full- 
pulsed Panthea. I find them as different each from 
the other as all from the tormenting Oriana or that 
seventeenth century Lydia Languish, Jasper's mock- 
romantic Luce. 

His most virile characters are not the tragic or ro- 
mantic heroes of the plays, but the blunt soldier- 
friends. It has been said, to be sure, that " there is 
scarcely an individual peculiarity among them." ^ But 
Mardonius never deserts his King, Melantius does. 

1 Thorndike, Influence of B. and F., p. 123. 



HIS DRAMATIC ART 381 

And neither the Mardonius nor the Melantius of Beau- 
mont has the waggish humour of Beaumont's Dion. 
His romantic heroes, on the other hand, are not so 
distinct in their several characteristics ; Amintor, Phil- 
aster, Leucippus are generous, impulsive, poetic, read- 
ily deluded, undecided, and in action indecisive. 
The differentiation between them lies in the dramatic 
motive. Of Amintor the mainspring is the doctrine 
of the divinity of kings; he cannot be disloyal even 
to the king who has duped him and made of him a 
" fence " for his wife's adultery. Of Leucippus the 
mainspring is filial piety — disloyalty would mean 
surrendering his father to an incestuous and vengeful 
woman. Of Philaster the mainspring is the duty of 
revolt for the recovery of his ancestral throne. In 
Philaster and Cupid's Revenge Beaumont's tyrants are 
sonorific yet shadowy forms ; but the king of the M aides 
Tragedy is a thoroughly visualized monster, and Ar- 
baces in A King and No King stands as art epitome of 
progressively developed, concrete personality, abso- 
lutely distinct from any other figure on Beaumont's 
stage. In the construction of Evadne and Bacha a 
similar skill in evolution and individualization is dis- 
played. The latter is an abnormality grown from lust 
to overweening ambition; the former never loses our 
sympathy: in her depravity there is the seed of con- 
science; through shame and love she wins a soul; the 
crime by which at last she would redeem herself 
leaves her no longer futile but half-way heroic; and 
her pleading for Amintor's love, her self-murder, fix 
her in memory among those squandered souls that 
have known no happiness — whose misery or whose 



382 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

shame is merged and made beautiful in the pity of 
it all. 

Of his braggarts and poltroons Beaumont is pro- 
fuse : the best are Bessus and Calianax, so far as they 
have not been reduced to horse-play by another hand. 
For Pharamond we are indebted as much to Fletcher 
as to Beaumont. The Jonsonian humours of Beau- 
mont's braggarts, excellent as they may be, are not 
more clearly marked nor better drawn than those of 
many of his other characters, the misogynist, the 
retributive Oriana, and the gourmand-parasite, in his 
youthful comedy of The Woman-Hater, or the devil- 
may-care Merrythought, Luce, the grocer and his 
wife, and in fact every convulsing caricature in his 
matchless Knight of the Burning Pestle. Of Beau- 
mont's effectiveness in satire and burlesque, enough 
has already been said. His laughter is genial but not 
uproarious: he chuckles; he lifts the eyebrow, but sel- 
dom sneers. With the Gascon he vapours; with the 
love-lorn languishing, simpers; with the heroic Cap- 
tain of Mile End, whiffles and — tongue in cheek — 
struts and throws a turkey-step; with the jovial rois- 
terer he hiccoughs and wipes his mouth. Homely wit, 
bathos, and the grotesque he fixes as on a film, and 
makes no comment; fustian he parodies; affectation 
he feeds with banter. For the inflated he cherishes a 
noiseless, most exiguous bodkin. 

As to the matter of technique we have observed 
that the clear and comprehensive expositions of the 
joint-plays are generally Beaumont's, — for instance, 
those of The M aides Tragedy, Philaster, King and No 
King, and The Scorn fid Ladie; that in the tragedies 



FLETCHER IN THE JOINT-PLAYS 383 

and tragicomedies the sensational reversals of fortune, 
as well as the cumulative suspenses and reliefs of the 
closing scenes, are in nearly all cases his ; and that in 
the tragicomedies the shifting of interest from the 
strictly tragic and universal to the more individual 
— pathetic, romantic, and comic — emotions, is also 
his. The conviction of Evadne by her brother is an 
exception: that is the work of Fletcher; but her con- 
trition in the presence of Amintor is again Beaumont's. 
What he was capable of in romantic comedy is shown 
by his ' Ricardo and Viola ' episode. He cared much 
more for romance than for intrigue ; and he found his 
romance in persons of common life as readily as 
among those of elevated station. In his share of the 
comedies of intrigue he shows, as elsewhere, that he 
was capable of Elizabethan bubukles, but ludicrous not 
lecherous. Above all, he delighted in interweaving 
with the romantic and sentimental that which partook 
of the pastoral, the pathetic, and the heroic. And we 
have noticed that, through the heroic and melodra- 
matic, his more serious plays pass into the atmosphere 
of court life and spectacular display. 

As for Fletcher's share in the dramas written in 
partnership with Beaumont, little need be said by way 
of summary. He bulks large in the comedies of in- 
trigue, The Scornfid Ladie and The Coxcomhe; and 
especially in the sections of plot that are carnal, 
trivial, or unnatural. He is in them just what he is 
in his own Monsieur Thomas and his pornographic 
Captaine — in the latter of which, if Beaumont had 
any share at all it is unconvincing to me, save pos- 
sibly as regards the one appalling scene of which I have 



384 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

spoken some five chapters back. To the tragedies and 
'' dramatic romances " or tragicomedies Fletcher did 
not contribute one-third as much as his co-worker. 
As in the murder-scene of The M aides Tragedy he 
displays the dramaturgy of spectacular violence, so 
in the scene between Melantius and Evadne, the power 
of dramatic invective. But his aim is not the fur- 
therance of interest by the dynamic unfolding of per- 
sonality, or by the propulsion of plot through inter- 
play of complicated motives or emotions, it is the 
immediate captivation of the spectator by rapidity 
and variety: by brisk, lucid, and witty dialogue, by 
bustle of action and multiplicity of conventional de- 
vice, as in Cupids Revenge. Few of his scenes are 
vital; most are clever histrionic inlays, subsidiary to 
the main action, or complementary and explanatory, 
as in Philaster and A King and No King. His char- 
acters move with all the ease of perfect mechanism; 
but they are made, not born. It follows that, in the 
more serious of the joint-dramas, the principal per- 
sonages are much less indebted to his invention than 
has ordinarily been supposed. In the comedies of 
intrigue, on the other hand, conventional types of the 
stage or of the theatre-going London world, especially 
the fashionable and the Bohemian provinces thereof, 
owe their existence chiefly to him. Blackguards, 
wittols, colourless tricksters, roaring captains, gallants, 
debauchees, lechers, baw^ds, libidinous wives, sophisti- 
cated maidens who preen themselves with meticulous 
virtue but not with virtuous thoughts, all these people 
the scenes which Fletcher contributed to the joint- 
comedies. And some of them thrust their faces into 



FLETCHER IN THE JOINT-PLAYS 385 

the romantic plays and tragedies as well. Fletcher's 
most important contribution to the drama, his masterly 
and vital contribution, is to be found in his later work ; 
and of that I have elsewhere treated,^ and shall have 
yet a word to say here. 

Of the Beaumont-Fletcher plays the distinctive 
dramaturgy as well as the essential poetry are Beau- 
mont's, and these are worthy of the praise bestowed 
by his youthful contemporary, John Earle: 

So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon, 
And all so born within thyself, thine own. 

The Maske, The Woman-Hater, and The Knight of 
the Burning Pestle should appear in a volume bearing 
Beaumont's name. And for the partnership of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, perhaps, some day. 

Some publisher will further justice do 
And print their six plays in one volume too. 

1 The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare, Part Two, in 
Representative English Comedies, Vol. Ill, now in press. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

DID THE BEAUMONT ' ROMANCE ' INFLUENCE 
SHAKESPEARE ? 

RICHARD FLECKNOE, in his Discourse of the 
English Stage, 1664, thinking rather of the ro- 
mantic and ornamented quality of Beaumont and 
Fletcher's plays, " full of fine flowers," than of any 
anticipation ift them of the love and honour of plays 
of the Restoration, says that they were the first to 
write " in the Heroick way." Symonds calls them 
the " inventors of the heroical romance." And lately 
Professor Thorndike ^ and others have conjectured 
that the Shakespeare of Cymheline, Winter's Tale, 
and The Tempest was following the lead of the two 
younger dramatists in what is attributed to them as 
a new style of * dramatic romance ' in his dramas. 
The argument is that Philastcr (acted before October 
8, 1 610) preceded Cymheline (acted between April 
20, 1 610 and May 15, 1611), and suggested to Shake- 
speare a radical change of dramatic method, first mani- 
fest in Cymheline. And that five other " romances 
by Beaumont and Fletcher," Foure Playes in One, 
Thierry and Theodoret, The Maides Tragedy, Cupid's 
Revenge and A King and No King, constituting with 

1 The Iniluence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare, 1901. 
See M. W. Sampson's critique in /. Ger. Phil, II, 241. 

386 



THE BEAUMONT ' ROMANCE ' 387 

Philaster a distinctly new type of drama, were in all 
probability acted before the close of 161 1, and simi- 
larly influenced the method of The Winter's Tale and 
The Tempest, also of 161 1. 

Before discussing the theory of Shakespeare's in- 
debtedness to Philaster and its " Beaumont-Fletcher " 
successors, I should like to file a two-fold protest; 
first, against the use of the word ' romance ' for any 
kind of dramatic production, whatever. * Romance ' 
applies to narrative of heroic, marvellous, and imagin- 
ative content, not to drama. The Maides Tragedy 
and Cupid's Revenge are not romances; they are 
romantic tragedies. Philaster, A King and No King, 
and Cymbeline are, of course, romantic ; but specifically 
they are melodramatic tragicomedies of heroic cast. 
Pericles, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest are 
romantic comedies of marvel or adventure. Nothing 
is gained in criticism by giving them a name which 
applies, in English, strictly to narrative, or by regard- 
ing them as of a different dramatic species from the 
romantic dramas of Greene and Shakespeare that pre- 
ceded them. I object, in the second place, to the 
grouping of the six plays said to constitute " a dis- 
tinctly new type of drama " under the denomination 
" dramatic romances of Beaumont and Fletcher " ; for 
in some of them Beaumont had no hand, and in others, 
the most important, Fletcher's contribution of roman- 
tic novelty is altogether secondary, mostly immaterial. 
With Thierry and Theodoret, for instance, thus loosely 
called a " Beaumont-Fletcher romance," it is not 
proved that Beaumont had anything to do. The 
drama displays nothing of his vocabulary, rhetoric 



388 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

or poetry. It is a later production by Fletcher, Mas- 
singer, and probably one other; and is the only play of 
this tragic-idyllic-romantic type attempted by Fletcher 
after Beaumont had ceased writing. In three of the 
Foiire Playes in One, Beaumont does not appear. He 
may possibly be traced in three scenes of The Triumph 
of Love; but with no certainty. Fletcher, on the 
other hand, had very little to do with the three great 
dramas of sensational romance which form the core 
of the group in question, Philaster, The M aides Trag- 
edy, and A King and No King. As I have shown, 
he contributed not more than four scenes to Philaster, 
four to The Maides Tragedy, and five to A King and 
No King. And, with the exception of two spectacu- 
larly violent scenes in The Maides Tragedy, his con- 
tribution, so far as writing goes, is supplementary 
dialogue and histrionic by-play. Whatever is essen- 
tially novel, vital, and distinctive is by Beaumont. To 
Cupid's Revenge Beaumont's contribution was slighter 
in volume, but without it the play would lack its dis- 
tinctive quality. Lf we must cling to the misnomer 
' romance ' for any group of plays which may have 
influenced Shakespeare's later comedies, let us limit 
the group to its Beaumont core, and speak of the 
' Beaumont romance.' 

The express novelty in technique of the six arbitra- 
rily selected, so-called ' Beaumont-Fletcher romances ' 
is supposed to lie in the dramatic adaptation of certain 
sensational properties more suitable to narrative fic- 
tion; especially in the attempt to heighten interest by 
adding to the legitimate portrayal of character under 
stress and strain (as in tragedy), or of character in 



DID HE INFLUENCE SHAKESPEARE? 389 

amusing maladjustment with social convention (as 
in comedy), the portrayal of vicissitudes of fortune; 
and in the attempt to enhance the thrills appropriate 
to tragic and comic appeal by such an amalgamation 
of the two as shall cause the spectator to run up and 
down the whole gamut of emotional sensibility. In 
the realm of tragedy the accentuation of the possi- 
bilities of suspense, whether by Beaumont or any 
other, would be a novelty merely of degree. Cupid's 
Revenge, and The Triumph of Death (in the Foure 
Playes in One) could hardly have impressed the au- 
thor of Romeo and Jvdiet and Hamlet as in this respect 
astounding innovations ; and The M aides Tragedy 
does not, so far as I can determine, sacrifice the unities 
of interest and effect for enhancement and variety of 
emotional thrill. In any case, it would be necessary 
to date Timon, Antony, and Coriolanus, two or three 
years later than the fact, if one desired to prove that 
any Shakespearian tragedy was influenced by a Beau- 
mont-Fletcher exaggeration of suspense. Whatever 
exaggeration may exist had already been practised by 
Shakespeare himself. If a Beaumont-Fletcher nov- 
elty influenced Shakespeare, that novelty must have 
lain in the transference of tragic suspense to the realm 
of romantic comedy with all its minor aesthetic ap- 
peals, and it would consequently be limited to their 
tragicomedies, Philaster and A King and No King. 
The tragicomic masques in the Foure Playes in One, 
that of Honour and that of Death, are too insignifi- 
cant to warrant consideration; and Beaumont had 
nothing to do with them. 

In determining the indebtedness, if any, of Cym- 



390 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

beline to Philaster we lack the assistance of authentic 
dates of composition. The plays were acted about 
the same time, — Philaster certainly, Cymbeline per- 
haps, before October 8, 1610. Beaumont and Fletch- 
er's play may have been written as early as 1609; 
Shakespeare's also as early as 1609 or 1608: in fact, 
there are critics who assign parts of it to 1606. With 
regard to the relative priority of Cymbeline and A 
King and No King, we are more fortunate in our 
knowledge. The former had certainly been acted by 
May 15, 161 1 ; the latter was not even licensed until 
that year, and was not performed at Court till De- 
cember 26. The probabilities are altogether in favour 
of a date of composition later than that of Cymbeline. 
But that Shakespeare's Cymbeline and his later ro- 
mantic dramas betray any consciousness of the exist- 
ence of Philaster and its succeeding King and No 
King has not been proved. Save for the more em- 
phatic employment of the masque and its accessories of 
dress and scenic display, of the combination of idyllic, 
romantic, and sensational elements of material, and 
the heightened uncertainty of denouement, all natu- 
rally suggested by the demands of Jacobean taste, no 
variation is discoverable in the course of Shake- 
speare's dramatic art. And in these respects I find 
no extrinsic novelty, no momentous change — noth- 
ing in Philaster and A King and No King that had not 
been anticipated by Shakespeare. Cymbeline, The 
Winter's Tale, and The Tempest are but the flowering 
of potentialities latent in the Two Gentlemen of 
Verona and As You Like It, Much Ado About Noth- 
ing and Twelfth Night, All's Well That Ends Well 



DID HE INFLUENCE SHAKESPEARE? 391 

and Measure for Measure — latent in the story of 
Apollonius of Tyre, and unavoidable in its dramatiza- 
tion as Pericles, a play that was certainly not influenced 
by the methods of Philaster. If in his later romantic 
dramas Shakespeare borrowed any hint of technique 
from the Beaumont contribution to the ' romances/ 
he was but borrowing back what Beaumont had bor- 
rowed from him or from sources with which Shake- 
speare was familiar when Beaumont was still playing 
nursery miracles of the Passion with his brothers in 
the Gethsemane garden at Grace-Dieu. Shakespeare's 
later comedies are a legitimate development of his 
peculiar dramatic art. Beaumont's tragicomedies, 
with all their poetic and idyllic beauty and dramatic 
individuality, are novel, so far as construction goes, 
only in their emphasized employment of the sensa- 
tional properties and methods mentioned above. 
Their characteristic, when compared with that of 
Shakespeare's last group of comedies, is melodramatic 
rather than romantic. They set, in fine, as did Chap- 
man's Gentleinan Usher, and Shakespeare's Measure 
for Measure and All's Well that Ends Well, an exam- 
ple which, abused, led to the decadence of Elizabethan 
romantic comedy. 

The resemblance between Philaster and Cymbeline, 
such as it is, is closer than that between Philaster and 
the Shakespearian successors of Cymbeline, — The 
Winter's Tale and The Tempest. But the common 
features of all these plays, the juxtaposition of idyllic 
scenes and interest with those of royalty, the com- 
bination of sentimental, tragic, and comic incentives 
to emotion, the false accusations of unchastity and the 



392 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

resulting jealousy, intrigue, and crime, the wander- 
ings of an innocent and distressed woman in boy^s 
clothing, the romantic localization, did not appear first 
in either Philaster or Cymbeline. Philaster and 
Cymheline follow numerous clues in the idyllic-comic 
of Love's Labour's Lost and Midsummer-Nigh fs 
Dream; in the idyllic-romantic-pathetic of Tzvo Gen- 
tlemen of Verona, As You Like It, and Twelfth 
Night; and for that matter in the materials furnished 
by Greene, Lodge, Sidney, Sannazzaro, Montemayor, 
Bandello, Cinthio and Boccaccio; and in the romantic 
and tragicomic fusion already attempted in Much 
Ado, All's Well, and Measure for Measure. For the 
character and the trials of Imogen, Shakespeare did 
not require the inspiration of a Beaumont. He had 
been busied with the figure of Innogen (as he then 
called her) as early as 1599; for in the 1600 quarto of 
Much Ado she appears by sheer accident in a stage 
direction as the wife of the Leonato of that play. 
He had been using the sources from which Cymheline 
is drawn, — Holinshed and Boccaccio, and that early 
romantic drama, Fidele and Fortunio, — before Philas- 
ter was written. And it is much more likely that 
the Belarius of Shakespeare and the Bellario of Beau- 
mont were both suggested by the Bellaria of Greene's 
Pandosto, than that Shakespeare borrowed from 
Beaumont. Nor is Shakespeare likely to have been 
indebted to Beaumont's example for the sensational 
manner of the denouement in Cymheline — the suc- 
cession of fresh complications and false starts by 
which suspense is sustained. These are precisely the 
features that distinguish those scenes of Pericles 



DID HE INFLUENCE SHAKESPEARE? 393 

which by the consensus of critics are assigned to 
Shakespeare; and Pericles was written by 1608, at 
least as early as Philaster, and in all probability earlier. 
In his story of Marina, Shakespeare is merely pur- 
suing the sensational methods of Measure for Meas- 
ure and anticipating those of The Winter's Tale. In 
general, the plot lies half-way between the tragicomic 
possibilities of the Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, 
All's Well, and Measure for Measure, and the roman- 
tic manipulation of Cymbeline and the later plays. 

In fine, there is closer resemblance between Cym- 
beline and half a dozen of Shakespeare's earlier come- 
dies, than between Cymbeline and Philaster; and it 
might more readily be shown that the author of 
Philaster was indebted to those half-dozen plays, than 
Shakespeare to Philaster. The differences between 
the Beaumont * romances ' and Shakespeare's later 
romantic comedies are in fact more vital than the 
similarities. In Philaster, The Maides Tragedy, and 
A King and No King the central idea is of contrast 
between sentimental love and unbridled lust, and this 
gives rise to misunderstanding, intrigue, and violence. 
In Shakespeare's later comedies the central motive 
is altogether different : it is of disappearance and dis- 
covery. The disappearance is occasioned by false 
accusation or conspiracy. In Pericles, Cymbeline, 
and The Winter's Tale, the dramatic interest revolves 
about the pursuit of a lost wife or child, the wander- 
ings and trials of the heroine, and her recovery; ^ in 
The Tempest, about the disappearance and discovery 
of the ousted Duke and his daughter. There is no 

1 See Morton Luce, Hand Book to Shakespeare's Works, p. 338. 



394 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

resemblance between Beaumont's love-lorn maidens 
in page's garb pursuing the unconscious objects of 
their affection and Shakespeare's joyous girls and 
traduced wives. Nor is there in Shakespeare's later 
comedies any analogue to the sensual passion of the 
' Beaumont and Fletcher romances,' to their Bachas, 
Megras, and Evadnes, their ultra-sentimental Philas- 
ters, their blunt soldier-counselors and boastful pol- 
troons. Pisanio and Cloten have respectively no kin- 
ship with Dion and Pharamond. What appears to 
be novel in Pericles and its Shakespearian successors, 
the somewhat melodramatic denouement, is, as I 
have said, but the modification of the playwright's 
well-known methods in conformity with the contem- 
porary demand for more highly seasoned fare. But, 
in essence, the dramatic careers of Imogen and Her- 
mione, are no more sensational than those of their 
older sisters. Hero, Helena, and Isabella. And w^hat 
is most evidently not novel with Shakespeare in his 
later romantic comedies, — the consistent dramatic 
interaction between crisis and character,— is precisely 
what the * Beaumont-Fletcher romances ' do not 
always possess. Beaumont's characterization at its 
best, with all its naturalness, compelling pathos, poign- 
ancy, and abandon is lyrical or idyllic rather than dra- 
matic; Fletcher's is expository and histrionic — of 
manners rather than the man. 

Beaumont did not influence Shakespeare. And if 
not Beaumont, then certainly not Fletcher; for in the 
actual composition of the core of the so-called * Beau- 
mont-Fletcher romances ' Fletcher's share was alto- 
gether subordinate; and since after the dissolution of 



DID HE INFLUENCE SHAKESPEARE? 395 

the partnership he attempted but one romantic tragic 
drama of that particular kind, Thierry and Theodoret, 
— and that a clumsy failure, — it must be concluded 
that in the designing of those ' romances ' his share 
was even less significant. But to appreciate the con- 
tribution of Beaumont to Elizabethan drama, and his 
place in literary history, it is fortunately not necessary 
to assume that he diverted from its natural course the 
dramatic technique of a master, twenty years his 
senior and for twenty years before Beaumont began 
to write, intimately acquainted with the conditions of 
the stage, — the acknowledged playwright of the most 
successful of theatrical companies and, in spite of 
changing fashions, the most steadily progressive and 
popular dramatic artist of the early Jacobean period. 
With regard to Beaumont it is marvel sufficient, that 
between his twenty-fifth and his twenty-eighth year 
of age he should have elaborated in dramatic art, 
even with the help of Fletcher, so striking a combina- 
tion of preceding models, and have infused into the 
resulting heroic-romantic type such fresh poetic 
vigour and verve of movement. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

CONCLUSION 

BEAUMONT'S poetic virtues are his peculiar 
treasure; but the dramatic method of his heroic- 
romantic plays lent itself lightly to imitation and de- 
basement. Not so much The Maides Tragedy and A 
King and No King, which respect the unities of in- 
terest and effect, as Philaster, The Coxcomhe, and 
Cupid's Revenge, to which Fletcher's contribution of 
captivating theatrical ' business ' and device was more 
considerable. Some of these plays, and some of 
Shakespeare's, too, and of Marston's, and Chapman's, 
and Webster's, paved the way for the heroic play of 
the Restoration — a melodramatic development of 
tragicomedy and sentimental tragedy, in which phi- 
landering sentiment, strained and histrionic passion, 
took the place of romantic love and virile conflict, — a 
drama in which an affected view of life tinged crisis 
and character alike, an unreasoning devotion to roy- 
alty or some other chivalric ideal obscured personal 
dignity and moral responsibility, and the thrill of sur- 
prise dissipated the catharsis, proper to art, whether 
tragic or comic. 

Upon the future of the comedy of intrigue and 
manners, Beaumont exercised no distinctive influence. 
In plays like The Coxcomb e and The Scornful Ladie, 

396 



NOT A LEADER IN DECADENCE 397 

the genius of Fletcher dominated the scenes of lighter 
dialogue and comic complication. And it is through 
comedies of intrigue and manners written by Fletcher 
alone or in company with others, especially Mas- 
singer, that Fletcher's individual genius exercised most 
influence on the subsequent history of the drama. The 
characteristics which won theatrical preeminence for 
his romantic comedies, heroic tragicomedies and trage- 
dies, written after the cessation of Beaumont's activity, 
were a Fletcherian vivacity of dialogue, a Fletcherian 
perfection of ' business,' and a Fletcherian exaggera- 
tion of the tragicomic spirit and technique of which, 
in the days of the Beaumont-Fletcher partnership, 
Beaumont had availed himself but which he, still, by 
virtue of his critical faculty, had held somewhat in 
restraint. 

From the time of Prynne's Histriomastix, 1633, 
there have been critics who have pointed to the grad- 
ual deterioration of the stage which, beginning, say 
some, with plays of Shakespeare himself, continued 
through Beaumont and Fletcher to the drama of the 
Restoration. Flecknoe, Rymer, Coleridge, Lamb, 
Swinburne, Ward, have commented upon phases of 
the phenomenon. And, recently, one of our most 
judicious contemporary essayists has in a series of 
articles developed the theme. ^ I heartily concur with 
the scholarly and well-languaged editor of The Nation, 
in many of his conclusions concerning the general 
history of this decline; and I have already in this 
book availed myself with profit of some of his sug- 

iMr. Paul Elmer More, The Nation, N. Y., Nov. 14, 1912, 
April 24, 1913, May i, 1913. 



398 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

gestions. I agree with him that the downfall of 
tragedy began when " the theme was altered from a 
single master passion to a number of loosely coordi- 
nated passions, thus relaxing the rigidity of tragic 
structure and permitting the fancy to play more inti- 
mately through all the emotions " ; that this degenera- 
tion may be traced to the time " when ecclesiastical 
authority was broken by scepticism and knowledge, 
and the soul was left with all its riches of imagina- 
tion and emotion, but with the principle of individual 
responsibility discredited and the fibre of self-govern- 
ment relaxed " ; that *' the consequences may be seen 
in the Italy of the sixteenth century " ; and that *' the 
result is that drama of the court which, besides its 
frequent actual indecency, is at heart so often non- 
moral and in the higher artistic sense incomprehensi- 
ble." But when he ascribes this alteration of the theme 
of tragedy from a single master passion to a num- 
ber of *' loosely coordinated passions " to our " twin 
dramatists," and cites as his example The Maides 
Tragedy in which, as he sees it, we have " but a suc- 
cession of womanly passions, each indeed cunningly 
conceived and expressed, but giving us in the end noth- 
ing we can grasp as a whole and comprehend " ; — 
and says that Evadne is " no woman at all, unless 
mere random passionateness can be accounted such," 
I shake my head in sad demurrer. First, because, as 
I have tried to show above, Evadne is anything but 
an incomprehensible embodiment of unmotived pas- 
sions, and The Maides Tragedy anything but a 
" loosely coordinated " concern, and secondly, be- 
cause I disfavour this attribution of the decadence of 



NOT A LEADER IN DECADENCE 399 

tragedy, or of comedy, for that matter, to our twin 
dramatists. To substantiate such a charge it would 
be incumbent upon the critic to prove not only that 
the decadence is indubitably visible in the joint- work 
of Beaumont and Fletcher, but that it is specifically 
visible in Beaumont's, as in Fletcher's, contribution 
to that work, and also, that it was not already patent 
in the dramatic productions of their seniors; that it 
was not patent in Heywood's Royall King and Loyall 
Subject, for instance ; in the " glaring colours " of 
Chapman's Bussy D'Amhois, and in his Gentleman 
Usher with its artificial atmosphere of courtly ro- 
mance, its melodramatic reverses and surprises, its 
huddling up of poetic justice; in the sensational de- 
vices, passionate unrealities and sepulchral action of 
Marston's Malcontent, the sophistical theme and cal- 
lous pornography of his Dutch Courtezan, and in the 
inhuman imaginings of his Insatiate Countess; that it 
was not patent in the heartless irresponsibility and 
indecency of Middleton, and in the inartistic warping 
of tragic situations to comic solutions that character- 
ize his early romantic plays ; that it was not patent in 
the poisonous exhalations, the wildering of sympathy, 
and the disproportioned art that characterize the 
White Devil of their immediate contemporary, John 
Webster. 

The decadence was hastened by Fletcher ; but not in 
any distinctive degree by Beaumont. I second Mr. 
More's commendation of Prynne's '' philosophic crit- 
icism of 1632 that * men in theatres are so far from 
sinne-lamenting sorrow, that they even delight them- 
selves with the representations of those wicked- 



400 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

nesses,' " but I deplore the application of that criticism 
to Beaumont and Fletcher, as that " they loosed the 
bonds of conduct and left human nature as a mere 
bundle of irresponsibilities." 

Many of Fletcher's excesses and defects not only 
in the plays written with Beaumont, but in plays writ- 
ten after his death, have been conferred from the 
day of Flecknoe to the present upon Beaumont. 
There is very little **sinne-lamenting sorrow " in the 
Vdentinian of Fletcher, or of Fletcher and Massin- 
ger, and very little in Fletcher's Wife for a Month; 
but in many of Beaumont's scenes in The Maides 
Tragedy, and A King and No King, and The Cox- 
combe the genuine accents of '* sinne-lamenting sor- 
row " are heard. Fletcher certainly " loosed the 
bonds of conduct and left human nature as a mere 
bundle oi irresponsibilities," but not Beaumont. Let 
the reader turn to that poet's scenes in the joint-plays 
(two-thirds o'f the great ones) as I have indicated 
them, or to what I have unrolled of Beaumont's men- 
tal habit, and judge for himself.^ 

The concession of the essayist from whom, as a 
representative of enlightened modern opinion upon 
the subject, I have been quoting, — that " as Fletcher's 
work stands, he may appear utterly devoid of con- 
science, a man to whom our human destinies were 
mere toys," I hail with delight, although I think that 
Fletcher the man had more honest ideals than Fletcher 
the dramatist. But, as a critic, I resent the surmise 
that Fletcher " was by nature of a manlier, sounder 
fibre than Beaumont." In the heroic-romantic com- 

1 Chapters XXII and XXV, above. 



COMPARED WITH FLETCHER 401 

edy, The Humorous Lieutenant, Fletcher displays, in- 
deed, as Mr. More says, " a strain almost like that of 
Shakespeare, upon whom he manifestly modelled him- 
self in everything except Shakespeare's serious insight 
into human motives." But does that play reveal any- 
thing of manlier, sounder fibre than Beaumont's A 
King and No King? 

Written in 1619 The Humorous Lieutenant has en- 
during vitality, though not because of its tragicomic 
presupposition ; for the wars and rumours of war are 
rhetorical or humorous, the devilish design of the 
King upon the chastity of the heroine is predestined 
to failure, — and the announcement of her death, but 
a dramatic device which may impose upon the credul- 
ity of her noble lover but not upon the audience. In 
the MS. of 1625 it is styled "a pleasant comedie"; 
and such it is, of ' humour ' and romantic love, upon 
a background of the heroic. It is Fletcher's best 
comedy of the kind ; one of the best of the later Shake- 
spearian age. The conception of the Lieutenant, 
whose humour is to fight when he is plagued by 
loathsome disease and to wench when he is well, is 
not original, nor is the character of the hero Deme- 
trius ; but in the elaboration Fletcher has created these 
characters anew, has surrounded them with half a 
dozen other figures no less life-like, and has set them 
in a plot, cunningly welded of comic, sentimental, 
and martial elements, and captivatingly original. 
Though the interest is partly in a wanton intrigue, 
and the mirth grossly carnal even when not bawdy, 
I think that the objectionable qualities are, for almost 
the only time in Fletcher's career in comedy, not in- 



402 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

eradicable. The wondrous charm, *' matchless spirit," 
vivacity, and constancy of Celia render the machina- 
tions of the procuress, Leucippe, and her '' office of 
concealments " futile, — so much dramatic realism to 
be accentuated or mitigated at the will of the stage 
manager; — and the alluring offers of the king are 
but so many weapons for his own defeat. If the 
Lieutenant were not an indissoluble compound of 
hero, swashbuckler, shirker, and " stinkard," I fear, 
indeed, that he would lose his savour. But the love 
of Rabelaisian humour is, after all, ingrained in the 
male of the species, and if the license be not nauseat- 
ing it is not necessarily damnable. This boisterous, 
pocky rascal who '' never had but two hours yet of 
happiness," and who courts the battlefield to save 
him *' from the surgeon's miseries," held the stage 
from the time of Condel, Taylor, and Lowin, to that 
of Macready and Liston, and there is no reason 
why his vitality should not be perennial. There are 
few more laughable scenes in farcical literature than 
those in which, having drained a philtre intended to 
make Celia dote upon the King, the Lieutenant im- 
agines himself to be a handsome wench of fifteen, 
wooes the King most fatuously, even kisses the royal 
horses as they pass by. The meeting and the parting, 
the trials and the reunion, of Celia and Demetrius 
constitute the most convincing and attractive romantic- 
pathetic love-affairs in Jacobean drama since Shake- 
speare had ceased to write. Indeed, this " perilous 
crafty," spirited, ** angel-eyed " girl " too honest for 
them all " who' so ingeniously and modestly shames 
the lustful monarch and wins her affianced prince is 



COMPARED WITH FLETCHER 403 

not unworthy of the master. Nor is Demetrius. The 
play contains many genuinely poetic passages, and 
some of those lines of meteoric beauty — " our lives are 
but our marches to the grave " — in which Beaumont 
abounded, and that Fletcher too rarely coined. With 
all the rankness of its humour, the play has such lit- 
erary and dramatic excellence that one cannot but 
regret the infrequency with which Fletcher produced 
that of which he was capable. 

But even this best of Fletcher's heroic-dramatic 
plays contains, as Mr. More has observed, " one of 
those sudden conversions which make us wonder 
whether in his heart he felt any difference between a 
satyr-like lust and a chaste love — the conversion of 
the lecherous old king." I grant Fletcher's surpass- 
ing excellence in comedy, especially the comedy of 
manners and intrigue as, for instance, The Chances 
and the Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, and I have 
elsewhere acknowledged his supremacy after Shake- 
speare in that realm. But we are now considering not 
that kind of composition or its technique, but the fibre 
which might be expected to show itself in compositions 
involving the element of seriousness. The Humorous 
Lieutenant is of that kind, — it is called a tragicomedy 
by some. Has it one tithe of the serious insight into 
human life of any of Beaumont's plays involving eth- 
ical conflict? 

Inquiring further into the fibre of Fletcher, let us 
pass in brief review another play, a genuine tragi- 
comedy this time, A Wife for a Month, written the 
year before he died, of whose heroine Mr. More says 
that " from every point of view, ethical and artistic. 



404 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

she is one of the most finely drawn and truest women 
in the whole range of English drama." The compli- 
cation, here, assuredly affords opportunity for the dis- 
play of sound and manly fibre; and the tragicomedy 
is instructive in more ways than one : it illustrates 
Fletcher's skill in construction and his disregard of 
probability; his sense of moral conflict and his in- 
sensibility to moral beauty; his power to conceive 
characteristic situations and his impotence to construct 
natural characters; his capability of noble sentiment 
and poetic expression and his beastly perverseness of 
fancy, his prostitution of art to sordid sensationalism. 
The story of the cumulative torments to which a lust- 
ful usurper subjects the maiden, Evanthe, whom he 
desires, and Valerio whom she loves, is graphically 
estimated by one of the dramatis personae, — '' This 
tyranny could never be invented But in the school of 
Hell: earth is too innocent." Beside it Zola's UAs- 
sommoir smells sweet, and a nightmare lacks nothing 
of probability. Ugly, however, as the fundamental 
assumption is: namely, that the tyrant should permit 
a wedding on condition that at the end of a month 
the husband shall suffer death, — and with provision 
that meanwhile the honeymoon shall be surrounded 
with restriction more intolerable than death itself; 
and incredible as is the contrivance of the sequel, — 
kept a-going by the suppression of instinct and com- 
monsense on the part of the hero, and withheld from 
its proper tragic conclusion by miraculous cure, an 
impossible conversion, and an unnatural clemency, — 
the plot is after all deftly knit, and the interest sus- 
tained with baleful fascination. But it would be 



COMPARED WITH FLETCHER 405 

difficult to instance in Jacobean drama a more incon- 
gruous juxtaposition of complication morally con- 
ceived, and execution callously vulgarized, than that 
offered by the scene between Valerio and Evanthe on 
their wedding-night. In the corresponding scene of 
The M aides Tragedy (II, i), Beaumont had created a 
model: Amintor bears himself w^ith dignity toward 
his shameless and contemptuous bride. But in 
Fletcher's play it is this " most finely drawn and truest 
woman " that makes the advances ; and she makes 
them not only without dignity, but with an unmaidenly 
persistence and persuasiveness of which any aban- 
doned ' baggage ' or Russian actress of to-day might 
be ashamed. And, still, the dramatist is never weary 
of assuring us that she is the soul of " honour mingled 
with noble chastity," and clad in " all the graces " 
that Nature can give. In the various other trying 
situations in which Evanthe is placed it is requisite 
to our conviction of reality that she be the " virtuous 
bud of beauty " : but the tongue of this " bud " blos- 
soms into billingsgate, she swears " something awful," 
and she displays an acquaintance with sexual pathology 
that would delight the heart even of the most rabid 
twentieth-century advocate of sex-hygiene for boys 
and girls in coeducational public schools. 

Two or three of the characters are nobly conceived 
and, on occasion, contrive to utter themselves with 
nobility. Valerio achieves a poetry infrequent in 
Fletcher's plays when he says of the shortness of his 
prospective joys: 

A Paradise, as thou art, my Evanthe, 
Is only made to wonder at a little. 



4o6 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

Enough for human eyes, and then to wander from," — 

and when he describes the graces of spiritual love. 
And the Queen's thoughts upon death, though melo- 
dramatic, have something of the dignity of Beaumont's 
style. But the minds of the principal personages re- 
flect not only the flashing current but the turbid 
estuaries of Fletcher's thought. The passion, save 
for Valerio's, is lurid, and the humour latrinal. To 
sketch the bestial even in narrative, however fleet- 
ing, is inartistic; to fix it on canvas is offensive; to 
posture it upon the stage is unpardonable. The last 
is practically what Fletcher has done here ; and the 
wonder is that he appears to think that he is justifying 
virtue. 

No; Fletcher had not the fibre of Beaumont even 
when he was writing with him ; and he did not achieve 
" a manlier, sounder fibre," after Beaumont had 
ceased, and he had swung into the brilliant orbit which 
he rounded as sole luminary of the stage. 

I object again, — and the reader who has followed 
the exposition of the preceding pages will, I hope, ob- 
ject with me, — to the dictum of a German writer of 
this latter day, that the reason of the degeneracy of 
Beaumont and Fletcher, ethically, " seems to lie in the 
narrowing of the drama from a national interest to 
the flattery of a courtly caste." Mr. More opines that 
such an explanation should not be pressed too far ; and 
he suggests that one reason why " we are unable to 
comprehend many of the persons upon the stage of 
Beaumont and Fletcher " is that we are similarly 
unable to comprehend " the more typical men and 
women who were playing the actual drama of the 



COMPARED WITH FLETCHER 407 

age/' So far as Fletcher's dramatis personae are 
concerned, there is truth in this ; but why couple Beau- 
mont with him? li you omit a character or two in 
The Woman-Hater, which was a youthful jeu d' esprit, 
you shall find very few incomprehensible figures 
among those of Beaumont's creation. And as to the 
German mentioned above, Dr. Aronstein, what 
" flattery of a courtly caste " can he possibly detect 
in Beaumont's satire upon favourites in The Woman- 
Hat er; in that burlesque of bourgeois affectations, 
The Knight of the Burning Pestle (the Court, too, 
was still reading the literature there satirized) ; or 
in his Philaster, who was a rebel ; or in his Amintor of 
The Maides Tragedy, whose fate hinged upon his 
shuffling subservience to a king, or in the King himself 
on whom God sends " unlookt-for sudden death," be- 
cause of his lust; or in his King Arbaces, whose gen- 
eral has " not patience to looke on whilst you runne 
these forbidden courses"; or in his scenes of Cupid's 
Revenge, which scourge the vices of the Court; or in 
his Sir Roger and Mistress Abigail and her scornful 
Lady, — or in his Ricardo and Viola, who are just a 
lover and his lass, and have never dreamed of Court 
or King at all? 

I wonder whether it may not be possible for us 
henceforth to give to Fletcher, and the whole Fletch- 
erian syndicate, — the Massingers, Fields, Middle- 
tons and Rowleys, Dabornes, and the rest, — the praise 
and the blame for what they produced, but eliminate 
Beaumont from the award. One grows weary of the 
attribution to him of moral irresponsibilities and ex- 
travagances in art of which he was, in all that we 



4o8 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

have learned of his breeding, life, and mental habit 
the implicit opponent — very much like his brother 
Sir John, — and of the opposite of which he was in 
his poetic and dramatic output, as I have minutely 
demonstrated, the professed exponent. In the broad 
daylight of philological science and modern historical 
criticism we should no longer regard Beaumont-and- 
Fletcher as an indivisible pair of Siamese twins, con- 
structing with all four hands at once the fabric of 
fifty-three plays, or even of ten, and tongue-and- 
grooving the boards with such diabolic deftness that 
each artisan shall for ever be credited with the merits 
and defects of both. It is, at any rate, time that the 
world of scholars, — and then the world of readers 
may follow, — render unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's. 

As for Caesar, we concede to him, John Fletcher, 
once for all, as he may be read in his independent 
work, by one even running, artistic virtues numerous 
and brilliant : ^ gaiety, wit, sprightly dialogue ; mas- 
tery of stage-craft, — of all the devices of captivating 
plot and rattling ' business,' and all the conventions 
and theatrically legitimate clap-trap of dramatic types 
and humours, hallowed by success, adored by the, 
actor, and darling to the public. We concede skill in 
the weaving of romantic complications, captivatingly 
cunning, and in the construction of situations irresisti- 
bly ludicrous; remarkable inventiveness of sensational 
adventure and spectacular scene and attractive set- 

^They are well presented by Miss Hatcher in her John 
Fletcher-; and they are again discussed in my forthcoming third 
volume of Representative English Comedies. 



COMPARED WITH FLETCHER 409 

ting; realism at every turn, and an ability to portray 
manners, varied and minute. Above all, v^e admire, 
and thankfully rejoice in, his smoothness of mechan- 
ism, his lightness of touch, his contrivance and ma- 
nipulation of pure comedy — whether of manners or 
intrigue, — and in his world of characters, not only 
laughter-compelling, but endowed with humour them- 
selves and sworn to the enthronement of the Spirit 
of Mirth. 

On the other hand we read on every page of 
Fletcher's independent contribution to English drama 
what, perhaps, was not the man himself, but his drama- 
turgic pose — still for the world the essence of the 
Fletcher who ruled it from the stage : ^ we read his 
'' shallowness of moral nature," his acquiescence in 
the ethical apathy and cynicism of the time ; his indeli- 
cacy; his indifference to, if not irreverence for, the 
dramatic proprieties, — his subservience to popular 
taste and favour in an age when " the theatre had 
ceased to be the expression of patriotism and of the 
national life and had become the amusement of the 
idle gentleman and of such members of the lower 
classes as were not kept away by the Puritan disap- 
proval of the stage." We witness with amusement 
but with self-reproach his presentation of characters 
superficial, and superficially refracting the evanescent 
vanities and heartless vices of Jacobean London, as 
if representative of actual and general life; his play 
of emotions feigned or sentimental ; his violent con- 

1 See again Miss Hatcher's work, and G. C. Macaulay, Francis 
Beaumont, A Critical Study, especially pp. 186-188 ; and my essay 
on The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare (Part Two) in 
the volume mentioned above. 



4IO BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

trasts, unnatural conversions, impossible revolutions 
of fortune; we discern the absence of subtle intuition, 
the failure to effect profound and lasting impression, 
the " lack of seriousness and of spiritual poise." We 
note, in the heroic-romantic dramas, improbability 
and extravagance; and, in the tragedies, such as Val- 
entinian, a total disregard of the unity of interest, — 
just that muddling of motives of which the editor of 
The Nation has written, — and therefore the failure 
to realize unity of effect. There has been no moral 
sequence: the suspense has been distracted by the va- 
riety of emotions stirred. After the hours of strain 
to which the spectator has imaginatively subjected 
himself, the relief — what Aristotle calls the catharsis 
— is not forthcoming : because the intellect has not 
been clarified but fuddled ; the will has not been braced ; 
the feelings appropriate to tragedy — of pity and of 
fear — have not enjoyed an unthwarted, undiverted 
outflow. The faculties have been tantalized by m.anl- 
fold, deceptive, agonies of thirst. They should have 
been centred in one yearning, conducted to one clear 
spring of medicament, and purged by waters of truth, 
justice, and sympathy. From Fletcher's Valentinian 
and Bondiica despite the poetry and the onrush of 
the dramatic action there proceeds no calm, *' all pas- 
sion spent " ; no beauty that is peace. And of the 
tragicomedies, The Loyall Subject and A Wife for 
a Month, this verdict may be even more readily pro- 
nounced. 

Such are the excellences and defects of Fletcher. 
Let us give him all the glory of the former; but stay 
from burdening Beaumont, who had faults of his own. 



COMPARED WITH OTHERS 411 

with responsibility for the latter, — with the unmoral- 
ity or immorality or extravagant artistry of Fletcher 
when not associated with Beaumont. With the vices 
and virtues of Fletcher's rocket, bursting in stellar 
polychrome, Beaumont had nothing to do. To him 
justice can be accorded only if he, after these three 
centuries, be considered alone, — not for ever coupled 
with Fletcher, but spoken and thought of, and known, 
as«dramatist, poet, man of far sounder fibre, and more 
virile marrow, — of superior insight, imagination, and 
art. 

Next to Shakespeare, the most essentially poetic 
dramatist of the early Jacobean period was Francis 
Beaumont. He had not the learning of Jonson, nor 
the long career, nor the dictatorial position; nor did 
he attempt to rival him in comedy, or criticism. But 
his great poem, The Maides Tragedy is a thousand 
times more enthralling and poetic than Sejanus or 
Catiline. Shakespeare always excepted, the only au- 
thor of tragedy in that day whose intuitions and lines 
of astounding splendour at all compete with, sometimes 
surpass, Beaumont's is Webster; but the fascination 
of his Duchess of Malfy is lurid, miasmatic, stupefy- 
ing; that of The Maides Tragedy, breathless and 
heart-breaking. 

In the drama of mingled motive, Jonson produced 
but one masterpiece that in poetry, valiancy of design, 
and portrayal of the ridiculous, equals Beaumont's 
A King and No King, — the Volpone; but that is not 
tragicomedy, and it drips venom. All that stands be- 
tween A King and No King and artistic perfection is 
the denouement. If the lovers had died, their struggle 



412 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

against temptation still continuing, their passion un- 
fulfilled, — if in the moment of death, they had dis- 
covered that their union were no incest after all, Beau- 
mont would have left behind him another consummate 
tragedy. As it is, to find a parallel in Jacobean liter- 
ature, outside of Shakespeare, one must turn to Ford's 
'Tis a Pity, She's a Whore. There again with poetic 
effulgence the problem of incest is dramatized; but 
how half-hearted the struggle, insincere the moral, — 
the poetry, purple and unconvincing! 

In romantic comedy, between 1603 and 1625, others 
have produced plays which from the dramatic point 
of view equal Philaster, — Dekker, Hey wood, Marston, 
Chapman, Middleton, and Rowley. Not all even of 
Shakespeare's romantic comedies come up to Philaster 
in literary or dramatic excellence; but only Shake- 
speare has written what surpasses it. 

In the comedy that delineates humours, The Wom- 
an-Hater, as regards both poetry and technique, falls 
below several plays of Dekker, Chapman, Marston, 
Middleton, and Jonson, and below the earlier efforts 
of Shakespeare; but in characterization it is as good 
as some of Shakespeare's. There is no comic fig- 
ure in Love's Labour's Lost, the Two Gentlemen 
of Verona, or the Comedy of Errors, that surpasses 
Beaumont's Hungry Courtier; and the humorous dia- 
logue and the prose as a whole of The Woman-Hater 
are more natural, and more intelligible to the modern 
ear. With Shakespeare's later comedies that in any 
degree avail themselves of the ' humours ' element, or 
with Jonson's masterpieces in this kind. The Woman- 
Hater, of course, can not be placed in comparison. 



COMPARED WITH OTHERS 413 

But if for the nonce, we consider Beaumont's Knight 
of the Burning Pestle, merely in its ' humours ' aspect, 
we must acknowledge that its characters are as clear- 
cut, as typical of the time and as provocative of laugh- 
ter as those of Every Man in his Humour, which 
for all its historic significance most people nowadays 
read, or might read, with a yawn; and that it is less 
artificial in construction, more human in motive and 
character, more modern in mirth than The Silent 
Woman, — even though the object of its ridicule be 
now caviare to the general. 

To set Beaumont's burlesque as a comedy of man- 
ners beside any of Shakespeare's comedies from 1594 
down, would be futile, but of the early Shakespearian 
plays mentioned above none shakes more with fun 
than The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and not one 
gives us the flavour of London, — its citizens, their af- 
fectations and ideals, their reading, habits and life, 
— or of England, that the Knight affords in every 
scene. H Shakespeare instead of writing, say, the 
Comedy of Errors had written The Knight of the 
Burning Pestle, scholars would now be flooding us with 
Variorum editions of it, women's literary clubs would 
be likening him with fervour to Cervantes, and the pub- 
lic might be so well educated to its allusions and ideas 
that our Hebrew emperors of the theatrical world and 
arbiters of dramatic vogue would be *' starring " it 
through the country to the delight of audiences 
that wisely make a show of understanding and enjoy- 
ing everything that Shakespeare wrote. To what un- 
realized extent the fate of plays hangs upon the tra- 
dition of the green-room, the actor's whim, the 



414 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

manager's enterprise or ignorance, and luck, is ma- 
terial for an essay in itself. I am not asserting that 
The Knight of the Burning Pestle pretends to poetry, 
as do all of Shakespeare's plays; but that for chuck- 
ling and side-long mirth, and for manners and 
insight into the life of a rarely interesting period, it 
is fine comedy, while as burlesque it is equalled by 
few of the kind in our language and excelled by none. 
It may be true that burlesques lose their flavour with 
the passing of their victims. But that does not hold 
true of the drama of problems perennially recurring 
and of emotions common to men of every age and clime. 
Of such drama are The M aides Tragedy and A King 
and No King. They are not antiquated. And I doubt 
whether they are stronger meat than some of Shake- 
speare's plays, all of which are more or less ' arranged ' 
before they are placed upon the modern stage. As 
to strong meat, the diflerence between the Elizabethan 
taste and the present Georgian is more a matter of 
variety than of flavour. Our forefathers liked their 
venison in gobbets, for three hours at a stretch, and 
washed it down with a tun or two of sack. The thea- 
tre-going public to-day likes its game just as high, but 
it varies the meal with other dishes as highly seasoned, 
— and washes it down with a foreign-labeled little bot- 
tle of champagne. Our ancestors called a depraved 
woman by a brief bad name, and put it into poetry. 
We denominate her, if at all, by some euphemistic cir- 
cumlocution, in prose ; but we none the less throng the 
theatre to see Dalilah play, and we follow with ap- 
parent gusto her sinuous enticements upon the stage. 
We rejoice in problem-plays more erotic, and far 



COMPARED WITH OTHERS 415 

more subtly perilous, than those which Shakespeare 
and Beaumont beheld. We are of an age of uplift, 
and meticulous reform. We would eliminate forni- 
cation and adultery; but not from our plays. They 
teem with — suggestion. There is nothing neurotic, 
nothing insidious in The Maides Tragedy and A King 
and No King. The grave of sin is wide open ; and the 
spade that digged it stands in plain view, and is called 
a spade. On the whole I had rather have the Anglo- 
Saxon bluntness and gleaming poetry of the Beaumont 
than the whitewashed epigram and miching-mallecho 
of the twentieth-century play I saw last night. There 
is no reason why, properly cut and staged, Beaumont's 
greatest plays should not yield delight to-day. And as 
for the reader why should he not turn back to '' the 
inexhaustible treasures " of entertainment offered by 
these plays. " They were," as says Mr. Paul Elmer 
More, " they were to the Elizabethan age what the 
novel is to ours, and I wonder how many readers three 
centuries from now will go back to our fiction for 
amusement as we to-day can go back to Beaumont and 
Fletcher.'* 

I began this book by quoting from an historian of 
the drama of marked repute : " In the Argo of the 
Elizabethan drama — as it presents itself to the im- 
agination of our own latter days — Shakespeare's is 
and must remain the commanding figure. Next to 
him sit the twin literary heroes, Beaumont and 
Fletcher — more or less vaguely supposed to be in- 
separable from one another in their works." And 
also from the last great poet of the Victorian age : 
" If a distinction must be made between the Dioscuri 



4i6 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 

of English poetry, we must admit that Beaumont 
was the twin of heavenlier birth. Only as Pollux 
was on one side a demigod of diviner blood than 
Castor can it be said that on any side Beaumont was 
a poet of higher and purer genius than Fletcher; but 
so much must be allowed by all who have eyes and 
ears to discern in the fabric of their common work 
a distinction without a difference." If I have suc- 
ceeded in showing that in the fabric of their com- 
mon work the distinction between Beaumont and 
Fletcher is measured by a wide and clearly visible 
difference, I shall be happy. Others, to whom I have 
repeatedly expressed my indebtedness even when dis- 
agreeing with particulars of their criticism, have 
cleared the way. If in this book anything has been 
added to their services that may help the world to 
distinguish these two dramatists not only hand from 
hand but mind from mind, and to see Beaumont plain, 
as I see him in the long gallery of his contemporaries, 
I shall be happier still ; but most amply rewarded if, 
for the future, it may be fittingly recognized not only 
that Beaumont was the twin of heavenlier birth — 
the Pollux, but why he was. Then, perhaps, the 
world of sagacious readers may turn from talking 
always of Beaumont-and-Fletcher, and protest occa- 
sionally and with well-informed reason in the name 
of Francis Beaumont alone. 



APPENDIX 

GENEALOGICAL TABLES 



*iea 



< ^ 



Z 

o 



' K O 

< 









2- 

OT3 






.2 

[L,PQ 



I - 



u " *^ 



r- E 






2 


Sig 


>^ 


&S-J 


s 


^«E 


o 




o 




H 




w 


S 


z 




u 




o 


St""! .- 


41 


= "§ 


H 


<=> . 


z 


JQ 


< 




h) 




04 





c u 

IE 



en D. U 

j= 0, -- 



li--=Ml|i 






c 



■E S 



E^ 
.-a 



g'H-S E_' 



o ^ 



•n S -'! 



TJ O.CU 

Hit 

= .^ (S d 



419 



420 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 



o 

PQ D 
<3 CO 



Si 



> «■ 






^3 w^ "^o 






i-r t 2 

„- C U C .4) | — 

:Oco « u c ^ 



:^, 



(fa o 



c 

J3 






.S «3 = 

«o is -S^ 
£S I9 ^S 

£" ^2 r- 
^^ "s^ s^ 



■£ I =■ •' 

« • — .0 

.2 ^ -^ t:- 



o 
. a 

u - C 

c 



^ 1, 'id 

>-2 



I^S 



2 23^ 



D- 


(b 


E 


JS 






WvO* 


« 




J3 


"y 3 


— 5 


— CV — 


.2 


«S 


u 


«Ni?: 




fc- 














g 








JS 




_H 


.r~ 




"7 


k 


« 


-""!:? 





III- 



I- "i^. 



O 



^CM g 



t) -> 

2o^ o 












X 






■5 ° 6 „ 



til « -^ 
IE 



j= Q, c S '^ *» 

O 2m y 



APPENDIX 



421 



►J 
PQ 




11 












M O 

5 — ts 

z & S 

c E S 

> g s' 

■e «^ « 



.•a M 

CS « 

^-^ O 

« 
s 



422 BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST 






>» 

** O CB ? Q< • 



o E. 



b E w 



.N "^ o d 2 M 







Is- 




an \0 




< 


<U 


w 









c 


II- 


h 




, 


J3 




_^ 




S 


E- 




ifl 




< 


1- 




g 


Q 


PC 




1 


cd 
01 


U 


0^ 


.•••« 




£ 


J 


H 


eS-2 


1 


>> 


5 


X* 

P 







CS 

s 

II 



I H 



— 2^ E 






6BQ o 




TS 



1) 3 

ill 



— u 

'El 



APPENDIX 



423 



w 

PQ 
< 



en 






X 
o 



i?:!s 






ts 






III' 
«- 'S . 






°.2 



^•a q; £ « « 
* W.— 3 J: o 



5*5 



=•2 c'o 

2yCg 

5eH-| 









— jc^- 



^ CM 



'r^'l 



•a X'-' 









6 E'c« 



_c o 



6*^ 

■11 



'id 

y J3 lO 



H 



■a -fl Qj 

-g " *^ 
5 



se:2 



'6 uT" 



£■0 



-Icij 
x:oo 



INDEX 



INDEX 



{The page-numbers refer to the foot-notes as well as to the 
main body of the text.) 



Abington, Mrs., the actress, 

377 
Abington (Habington), Mrs., 
sister of Lord Monteagle, 

57 
Abuses Stript and Whipt, 135 
actors, lists preceding plays, 

229 
Ad Comitissam Rutlundiae, 

173 

Addison, Joseph, 188 
Aeschylus, 200 
afterthought-parentheses, 265, 

350 
Alchemist, The, no, 325, 334, 

336, 343 
Alden, R. M., editions of The 

Knight and A King and 

No King, no, 117, 234, 

252, 258, 287, 300, 311, 312, 

318, 361 
alliteration, 259 
All's Well that Ends Well, 79, 

115, 390, 391, 392, 393 
Amadis de Gaule, 313, 322, 

327 
Amends for Ladies, 302, 304, 

334 
Anatomy of Melancholy, The, 

186 
Anton, Robert, 328 



Antony and Cleopatra, 75, 79, 

116, 283, 389 
Apocrypha, The, 369 
apothegms, 289 
Arcadia, 106, 108, in, 133, 158, 

159 
Ariosto, 34 
Aristophanes, 197, 230 
Aronstein, P., 407 
Ascham, Roger, 23 
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, 10, 23, et 

passim 
Aston, Sir Walter, 166, 167 
Astree, D'Urfe, 89-90, 274 
'Astrophel,' 166 
As You Like It, 159, 345, 390, 

392 
Aubrey, John, Brief Lives, ed., 

A. Clark, 32, 95, 137, 153, 

219 

Bacon, Sir Francis, 35, ^6, 27, 
i25f., 129, 146, et passim 

Bacon, Sir Nicholas, and An- 
thony, 35, 64, 68 

Baker, Sir John of Sissing- 
hurst, Kent, 24, 65ff. ; 
Cicely, Countess of Dor- 
set, 66, 69, 70 ; Cicely, Lady 
Blunt, 69, 70; Grisogone, 
Lady Dacre, 69, 70, 178 



427 



428 



INDEX 



Baker family, 71, 137 
Baker, Sir Richard, 65, 66 
Baker, Richard, the historian, 

(yT, 70 
Bancroft, Bishop, 64, 216 
Bancroft, Thomas, Two 
Bookes of Epigrammes 
and Epitaphs, 1639, ^o 
Bandello, Thomas, 392 
Banke-Side, 95-96, 114, 170 
Barkstead, William, 335 
Barrens Wars, the, 42 
Basse, William, 40, 134, 199, 

200 
Battle of Bosworth Field, The, 

184, (22) 
Baudouin, Le Curieux Imperti- 
nent, 332 
Beau Manor, 10 ; " Beauman- 

oir," 12 
Beamnont and Fletcher, por- 
traits of, 190-192, 217- 
219; collaboration of (in 
general), 3-9, 223-416; the 
problem, 225-233 ; critical 
apparatus, 233-235; folios, 
225-229, 236-239; quartos, 
239-241, and under indi- 
vidual plays; editions, 217, 
234, 244, 271, 318, 324, 338, 
349, 359, 361, 368, 371, 
377; delimitation of the 
field, 236-242; versification, 
243-260; diction of 

Fletcher, 260-277, of Beau- 
mont, 281-290; mental 
habit of Fletcher, 277-280, 
of Beaumont, 281-290; au- 
thorship of Foure Playes, 
Love's Cure, The Cap- 
taine, 300-306; of the 
Woman-Hater, 73, 307 ; of 



The Knight of the Burning 
Pestle, 80, 310; of The 
Coxcombe, 337; of Phil- 
aster, 345; of The Maides 
Tragedy, 349; of Cupid's 
Revenge, 359; of A King 
and No King, 361 ; of the 
Scornful Ladie, 374; in- 
fluence upon Shakespeare 
(?) 386, upon the drama, 
396 ; Beaumont and 
Fletcher compared, 399-411 

Beaumont, Anthony, 160 

Beaumont, Barons and Vis- 
counts de, 10-12 

Beaumont's diction, 28iff. 

Beaumont, Elizabeth, Lady 
Vaux, 15, 46 

Beaumont, Elizabeth, sister of 
the dramatist, Mrs. Sey- 
liard, 43, 45, 46, 70, I59, 
176, 187 

Beaumont, Elizabeth, daughter 
of the dramatist, 180, 187 

Beaumont, Frances, post- 
humous daughter of the 
dramatist, i87ff. 

Beaumont, Francis, the dra- 
matist: his family, early 
years in Grace-Dieu, Ox- 
ford, loff. ; at the Inns of 
Court, earliest poems, etc., 
29ff. ; the Vaux cousins 
and the Gunpowder Plot, 
46ff. ; some early plays of, 
72ff. ; period of partner- 
ship with Fletcher, 95ff. ; 
relations with Shakes- 
peare, Jonson, and others 
in the theatrical world, 
ii4ff., I24ff., I45ff. ; The 
Masque of the Inner 



INDEX 



429 



Temple, 124-144; the Pas- 
toralists, and other con- 
temporaries at the Inns of 
Court, 131-144; an inter- 
secting circle of jovial 
sort, 145-149; the Countess 
of Rutland (EHzabeth Sid- 
ney), isoff. ; his marriage, 
death, surviving family, 
I72ff.; personality and con- 
temporary reputation, por- 
traits, igoff. ; versification, 
246ff., 28iff., stock words, 
phrases, and figures, 282ff. ; 
lines of Inevitable Poetry, 
287; his mental habit, 
29iff. ; his dramatic art, 
adaptation, etc., 378ff. ; Did 
the Beaumont " romance " 
influence Shakespeare? 

3S6ff.; not a leader in de- 
cadence, 396-401 ; Beau- 
mont compared virith 
Fletcher, 401-41 1 ; and 
with other dramatists, 
411-415 

Beaumont, Francis, his Poems, 
39, 40, iSoff., 172-174, 183, 
230, 251, 292, 295, 298, 330 

Beaumont, Francis, the Justice, 
father of the dramatist, 
15-19, 21, 24, 29 

Beaumont, Sir Henry, brother 
of the dramatist, 16, 18, 
29, 44, 45, 99 

Beaumont, Sir Henry, of Cole- 
orton, 19, 160 

Beaumont, Sir John, brother 
of the dramatist, 16, 18, 21, 
22, 25, 26, 29 38-40, 42-45, 
59-61, 116, 132, 146, 150, 



154, 159, 162-164, 166, 180, 
182, 184-186, 195 

Beaumont, John, Master of 
the Rolls, 12-14, 59-60 

Beaumont, Maria, Lady Vil- 
liers. Countess of Buck- 
ingham, 19, 160-163 

Beaumont, Sir Thomas, 45, 162 

Beaumont's versification, 246ff. 

Beeston's Players, 314 

Beggers Bush, The, 98, 236, 
2Z7, 378 

Eell, H. N, 14 

Bellman of London, The, 98 

Belvoir Castle, 154 

Berkenhead, John, 208 

Betterton, Thomas, 366 

Biographia Dramatica, The, 

Birch, Mem. of Q. Elizabeth, 

Blackfriars Theatre, the, 80, 81, 
85, 89, 96, 97, 102, 103, 104, 
105, 114, 119, 122, 136, 179, 
207, 314, 316, 317, 319, 342, 
343, 368, 370, 373 

Blackwell's Treatise on Equivo- 
cation, 53 

Blaiklock, Lawrence, 39, 40, 
150, 165, 295 

Blue Boar Inn, 22 

Boas, F. S., ed. of Philaster, 

349 
Boccaccio, loi, 334, 392 
Bolton, Edmund, 185, 194 
Bond, R. Warwick, 367, 368, 
371, 374; ed. of The Scorn- 
ful Ladie, 377 
Bonduca, 236, 238, 278, 378, 410 
Bosworth, battle of, 22, (184) 
houleversements, 364 



430 



INDEX 



Boyle, R., 234, 252, 254, 300, 

302, 308, 374 
Bread-street, 99, 113, 203 
Brett, Cyril, Drayton's Minor 

Poems, 191 
Bridal, The, 359 
Brittain's Ida, Phineas Fletch- 
er, 64 
Britannia's Pastorals, 132-144 
Broadgates, 29 
Brome, Richard, 92, 168, 212, 

213 
Brooke, Christopher, 38, 119, 

136, 145, 147-149 
Brookesby, Bartholomew, 48, 

57 ; Edward, 47 
Browne, William, 38, 40, 131- 

144, 153, 202, 214 
Browning, Robert, 183, 246 
Brydges, Egerton, 233 
Buc, Sir George, 349 
Buckingham, George Villiers, 

Duke of, 19, 60, 159-164, 

185 

Bullen, A. H., art. John 
Fletcher {D. N. B) ; gen. 
editor. Variorum Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, 203, 
234, 271, 272, 312, et pas- 
sim 

Burbadge, Cuthbert, 103, 342, 

343 

Burbadge, Richard, 102, 103, 
114, 118, 122, 136, 154, 316, 
317, 358 

Burre, Walter, 81, 319, 320, 
322, 323 

Burton, William, 16, 186 

Bury-Fair, 96, 220 

Bussy D'Amhois, 399 

Butler, James, Duke of Or- 
monde, 188 



cadences, conversational and 

lyrical, 247 
caesurae, 244!?. 
Cambridge English Classics, 

edition of Beaumont and 

Fletcher, 244, 263-270, et 

passim 
Camden, William, 137, 149, 

178, 182 
Camden Miscellany, The, 66 
Campion, Father, 46 
Capricious Lady, The, zyy 
Captaine, The, 98, iii, 176, 236, 

240, 306, 378, 383 
Cardenio or Cardenna, iii, 

119 
Carey, Giles, 114, 122, 336 
Carleton, Mistris, 125 
Carr (Ker) Robert, Earl of 

Somerset, 74, 75, 179, 372 
Cartwright, WiUiam, 209, 232 
Casaubon, Isaac, 182 
Catesby, Robert, 49, 50-53, 57, 

58 
Catholics, and the " Catholic 

Cousins " of Beaumont, 

46ff., 179 
Catiline, 120, 154, 411 
Cavendish, Henry, 17, 24 
Cavendishes, the, 16, 17, 38, 165 
Cavendish, Sir William, first 

Duke of Newcastle, 165 
Centurie of Praise, 200 
Cervantes, see Don Quixote 
Challoner, Missionary Priests, 

16 
Chalmers, A., 185, 233 
Chamberlain, John, 125, 126, 

i55f. 
Chancery, Inns of, 29, 30, et 
passim; and see Inns of 
Court 



INDEX 



431 



Chances, The, 64, 211, 230, 236, 
243, 244, 263, 267, 268, 279, 

403 

Chapel Players, the, 32 

Chapman, George, 85, 86, 87, 98, 
102, 116, 122, 124, 125, I32ff., 
135, 142, 154, 182, 189, 194, 
198, 200, 202, 203, 214, 317, 
328, 329, 391, 396, 399, 
412 

Charles I, 185, et passim 

Charles II, 358 

Charles, Duke of Byron, The 
Tragedie of, 317 

Charles, Prince of Wales, 371, 
372 

Charnwood Forest, 10, 11, 13, 
18, 20, 43, 151, 159 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 37 

Chaucer, Speght's, 24, 178 

Cheapside, 99, 114, et passim 

Child, H. H., 43 

'" chorizontes," the, 9 

Christ's Victorie, Giles Fletch- 
er, 64 

Cicely Tufton, see Rutland 

Cinthio, 392 

Clarendon, Lord, 169 

Clark, Andrew, 147, 148, 192 

Cleves wars, the, 368-370, 372, 

Z7Z 
Clifford, Anne, Countess of 

Dorset, of Pembroke and 

Montgomery, 192 
Clifford's Inn, 131 
Clifton, Sir Gervase, 166 
Clifton, Lady Penelope, i6sf., 

174, 202 
Cockayne, Sir Aston, 168, 219, 

226, 228, 233, Z77 
Coke, Sir Edward, 52, 58, 148, 

162 



Coleorton, 12, 19, 45, 160, et 

passim 
Coleridge, S. T., 5, 397 
Collier, J. P., 102, 220, 233 
Collins, Peerage of England, 

14, 17, 50, et passim 
Comedy of Errors, A, 35, 393, 

412, 413 
Commendatory^ Verses, 94, 

198, 229, 230, et passim 
Concerning the True Forms of 

English Poetry, 184 
Condell, Henry, 103, 120, 122, 

343, 402 
Congreve, William, 188 
Convivium Philosophicum, 145- 

149, 203 
Conyoke or Connock, 149 
Cook, Alexander, 122 
Cooke, W., 2)77 
Coke, Sir Edward, 52, 58 
Corbet, Bishop, 181, 195 
Coriolanus, 389 
Coronation, The, 229, 237 
Coryate, Tom, 99, 149 
Cotton, Charles, the elder, 98, 

168-170, 226-228 
couplet, ' heroic,' 252 
Cowley, Abraham, 184 
Coxcomhe, The, 8, 87, 96-101, 

103, 106, III, 202, 208, 228, 

236, 240, 2y:^, 286, 287, 294, 

296,298,311,332-341,370, 

378, 383, 396, 400 
Cranefield, Arthur, 149 
Critics of Beaumont and 

Fletcher, 234 
Croke, Sir John, Charles, and 

Unton, 138 
Cromwell, Oliver, 74, 138, 170 
Crowne of Thames, The, 184 
Cunliffe, J. W., 35, Z7 



432 



INDEX 



Cupid's Revenge, 8, 111-112, 
159, 237,239,240, 283,285, 
288, 294, 299, 305, 3 14, 359ff., 
370, 378, 381, 384, 386, 387, 
388, 389, 396, 407 

Curious Impertinent, The, El 
Curioso Impertinente, Le 
Curieux Impertinent, 332, 

334, Z3S 
Custome of the Countrey, 

The, 236 
Cymbeline, 344, 345, 386-395 
Cynthia's Revels, 85, 86 
Cyropddeia, 109 



Daborne, Robert, 122, 239, 379, 

407 

Damon and Pythias, 32 

Daniel, Joseph, 149 

Daniel, P. A., 349, 359 

Daniel, Samuel, 142, 194 

Darley, G., Works of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, 25, 181, 
233 

D'Avenant, William, 82, 307, 
30S, 350 

Davies, John, of Hereford, 
105, 133, 142, 145, 146, 209, 
342, 343, 346 366 

Day, John, 102, 122, 159, 314, 

325 
Dekker, John, 98, 102, 122, 211, 

412 
Denham, Sir John, 184 
Description of Elizium, Dray- 
ton, 191 
Devereux, Lady Penelope, 166 
diction, 2601?., 275f., 281 ff., and 
see Beaumont and Fletcher 
Diego Sarmiento, Don, Count 
Gondomar, 371 ff. 



Digby, Sir Everard, 48, 50, 52, 

53, 57 
Discourse of the English 

Stage, 386 
disputed plays, 30off. 
Distrest Mother, The, 186 
Divine Poems, Drayton, 191 
Dolce, Ludovico, Giocasta, 35 
Don Diego, see Sarmiento de 

Acuna 
Donne, John, 38, 98, 148, 149, 

150, 169 
Don Quixote, relation to The 

Knight of the Burning 

Pestle, esp. 321-331 ; also 

80, 120, 320, 332f., 413 
* Doridon,' i4off. 
Douay, 369 
Douthwaite, W. R., Gray's Inn, 

etc., 3off. 
Double Marriage, The, 6, 22,6 
Drake, Sir Francis, 27, 64, 138, 

216 
Dramatic Miscellany, Davies, 

366 
Drayton, Michael, 21, 26, 39, 

40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 72, 98, 

116, 122, I32ff., 137, 145, 

153, 182, 185, 187, 191, 192, 

194, 201, 202, 209 
Drummond, William, of Haw- 

thornden, 84. 90, 152, 193, 

194, 202, 230 
Dryden, John, 71, 72, 121, 188, 

2ZZ, 358, 365 

Duchess of MalH, The, 411 
Dugdale, G., 131 
Duke, H. E., Gray^s Inn, 34ff, 
Duke of Milan, The, 136 
Duke of York, The, (Prince 
Charles's) Players, 335, 336 
D'Urfe, Marquis, 89-90, 274 



INDEX 



433 



Dutch. Courtesan, The, 399 
Dyce, Alexander, Works of 
Beaumont and Fletcher, 
16, 19, 96, 19s, 233, et pas- 
sim 



Earle, John, Bishop, 156, 196- 
198, 209, 230, 241, 346, 385 

Eastward Hoe, 73, 79, 328 

Editions, also Folios and 
Quartos, see Beaumont and 
Fletcher 

Edwardes, Richard, 32 

Edwards, Jonathan, 25 

Eglogs, a revision of Idea, the 
Shepheard's Garland, Dray- 
ton, 42, 187 

Ekesildena, Catherine, 186 

Elder Brother, The, 237, 272 

Elegies, Brooke, 136 

(Certayn) Elegies — with Sa- 
tyres and Epigrames, Fitz- 
geffrey, 202 

Elegy on the Death of the Vir- 
tuous Lady Elizabeth, 
Countess of Rutland, 156, 
251 

Elements of Armories, Bolton, 

195 

EHzabeth Beaumont Seyliard, 
see Beaumont, Elizabeth 

Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland, 
see Sidney, Elizabeth 

Elizabeth, Princess, 33, 52, no, 
124, 139, 149 

Elizabeth, Queen, 67 

Elton, Oliver, Michael Dray- 
ton, 43, 167, 192 

Endimion and Phoebe, 41 

end-stopped lines, 243ff. 

English Palmerin, see Palmerin 



Epicoene, 103, 120, 322, 324, 335, 

369, 413 
Epigrams, Jonson, 121, 195, 203 
Epistle Dedicatorie, Shelton, 

321, 323 
Epistle to Henery Reynolds, 

Drayton, 201 
Epithalamium, Wither, 135 
Equivocation, Blackwell's trea- 
tise, 53 
Essay of Dramatick Poesie, 

Dryden, 233, 358 
Ethelwolf, oder der Konig 

Kein Konig, 367 
Euripides, 35, 200, 207 
Evans, Henry, 80, 102, 317, 342 
Evelyn, John, letter to Pepys, 

218 
Every Man in his Humour, 92, 

413 
Every Man out of his Humour, 

Z2, 3V 
Examination of his Mistris' 

Perfections, 172-174 
extra syllables, 243 

Faire Maide of the Inne, The, 
236, 238, 378 

Faithful Friends, The, 237, 378 

Faithfull Shepheardesse, The, 
21, 65, 73, 83-88, 90, 93, 
139, 166, 171, 216, 231, 237, 
240, 247, 249, 252, 261, 263, 
264, 265, 266, 270, 277, 280, 
302, 304 

False One, The, 236 

{Of The) Famous Voyage, 
203 

Farquhar, George, 188 

Fauchet, Thierry, 109 

Fawkes, Guy, 49, 52, 56 

feet, trisyllabic, 243 



434 



INDEX 



Fellows and Followers of 
Shakespeare, The, Gayley, 
233, et passim; see Gayley 

Fenner, Sir John, 130 

Ferrar, William, 138 

Fidele and Fortunio, 392 

Field, Nathaniel, 83, 84, 85, 86, 
87, 114, 122, 211, 214, 239, 
251, 272, 300, 302, 303, 304, 
305, 335, 342, 343, 360, 379, 
407 

Fifty Comedies and Tragedies, 
288 

Fitzgeffrey, Henry, Elegies, 
Satires, and Epigrams, 202 

Fleay, F. G., Hist. Stage, 
Chron. Engl. Drama, etc., 
4, 8, 41, 74, 84, 233, 234, 
238, 252, 300, 303, 308, 316, 
318, et passim 

Flecknoe, Richard, 386, 397 

Fletcher, John, (" I.F.") 40, 
195 ; his family, his youth, 
62ff. ; some early plays of, 
82ff. ; period of partnership 
with Beaumont, 95ff. ; re- 
lations with Shakespeare, 
Jonson, etc., ii4fTf., I24ff., 
I45ff. ; later years, portraits, 
2 1 1 ff . ; his versification, 
243ff., his diction, 26oJff.; 
stock words, phrases, and 
figures, 27off.; his mental 
habit, 277f[.; the Fletcher 
of the joint-plays, 383ff.; 
his dramatic art, 383-385, 
399-411 

Fletcher, criteria, 243fT. ; 26off.; 
see Beaumont and Fletcher, 
diction, verse, Ye-test, etc. 

Fletcher, Richard, Bishop, 62- 
68 



Fletcher, Dr. Giles, 64, 68; 
Giles, the younger, 64 

Fletcher, Phineas, 64 

' Fletcherian Syndicate, the,' 
379, 407 

Flowers, The, 36, 125 

Folio, First, Beaumont and 
Fletcher's Comedies and 
Tragedies, 1647, (35 
Plays), 236 

Folio, Second, Fifty Comedies 
and Tragedies, 1679 (S3 
Plays), 237 

Ford, John, 211, 412 

Forrest, The, Jonson, 152 

Fortescue, George, 186 

Foure Playes, or Morall Rep- 
resentations, in One, (see 
also Triumphs), 87, 236, 
240, 251, 272, 301-305, 378, 
386, 388, 389 

Foure Premises, The, 204, 325 

Frederick, the Elector Pala- 
tine, 2Z, 36, no, 124 

Fuller, Thomas, Worthies, 67^ 
108 



Gardiner, Robert, ZZ7 
Gardiner, S. R, Hist. Engl., 

and Prince Charles, 44, 49, 

74, 372ff., et passim 
Gardiner, Thomas, 138 
Garnet, Father Henry, 47, 51- 

54, 56-59 
Garrick, David, 366 
Gascoigne, George, Supposes, 

34, 35, Z7 
Gayley, C. M., The Fellows and 
Followers of Shakespeare, 
Part Two, in Rep. Eng. 
Com., Vol. Ill, now in 



INDEX 



435 



press, 233, 300, 385, 408, 

409, et passim 
Gentleman Usher, The, 391, 399 
Gerard, Father John, 47-56, 165 
Ghost of Richard III, Brooke, 

136 
Giffard, Maria, Lady Baker, 

Mrs. Fletcher, Lady Thorn - 

hurst, 65-71 
Gilbert, Adrian, 156 
Giocasta, Ludovico Dolce, 35 
Gismond of Salerne, 3^ 
Globe Theatre, the, 79, 97, 103, 

105, 114, 118, 120, 122, 144, 

179, 280 
Glover, A, and Waller, A. R., 

editors of Camb. Engl. 

Class., Beaumont and 

Fletcher, 244, 263-270, et 

passim 
Golden Remains, The, 150 
Goodere, Sir Henry, 43, 148; 

Francis, Anne, 43 
Goodwin, Gordon, 134, 139 
Gorhoduc, 37, 70 
Grace-Dieu, 13, 17, 18, 20, 22, 

45, 61, 72, 95, 98, 151, 159, 

391, et passim 
Gray's Inn, 33, 34, 35, 37, 124, 

125, I30f. 
Greene, Robert, Menaphon and 

Pandosto, 26, 159, 387, 
392 
Greenstreet Papers, The, 103, 

119, 136, 319 
Greg, W. W., 83, 159, 238, 272 
Grey Friars, at Leicester, 22 
Grey, Lady Jane, 23, 63, 66 
Grosart, A. B., art. in D. N. B., 

Sir John Beaumont's 

Poems, 16, 185, 187, 195, et 

passim 



Gunpowder Plot, the, 46-61, 

73, 138, 164 
Gurlin, Nat., 202 
Guskar, H, 88 
Gwynn, Nell, 366 

Hakluyt, Richard, 182 

HalHwell-PhiHipps, J. O., 342 

hamartia, 354, 358 

Hamlet, 79, 116, 117, 286, 389 

Harcourt, the Rt. Hon. Lewis, 
190 

Harleian MS. of Fletcher, 195 

Harington, Sir John, 63, 67 

Harris, John, 212 

Hasted, Hist. Kent, 50, 69, 71, 
176, et passim 

Hastings, Edward, second 
Lord, 14; Elizabeth (grand- 
mother of the dramatist), 
13, 14; Sir Henry, 48, 165; 
Lady Mary, 14; William, 
first Lord, 14, 23; Sir Wil- 
liam, 14 

Hastings, Earls of Hunting- 
don: George, first Earl, 13, 
14; Francis, second Earl, 
13-15, ^3, 24, 46; Henry, 
third Earl, 14, 24; George, 
fourth Earl, 48; Henry, 
fifth Earl, 38, 164, 165 

Hatcher, O. L., John Fletcher, 
A Study in Dramatic Meth- 
od, 231, 232, 233, 300, 408, 
409, et passim; in Anglia, 

89 

Hawkins, Sir Thomas, 138, 185 

Hele, Lewis, 130 

Heming, John, 103, 118, 120, 

136, 342, 343 
Hemings, John, see Heming 
Henry IV, no, 115 



436 



INDEX 



Henry VIII, 120, 179 
Herbert, Mary, Countess of 

Pembroke, 42 
Herbert, William, third Earl 

of Pembroke, 133, 153 
Herford, C. H., 287 
Herodotus, 109 
Heroical Adventures of the 

Knight of the Sea, 328 
Herrick, Robert, 169, 170, 350, 

361 
Herring, Joan, 220 
Hesperides, Herrick, 169, 170 
Heyward, Edward, 137 
Hey wood, Thomas, 122, 204, 

325, 331, 399, 412 
Hierarchie of the Blessed 

Angells, The, 204 
Hill, H. W., 159 
Hill, Nicholas, 203 
Hills, G., Z2>7 
Histoire de Celidee, Thamyre, 

et Calidon, 89 
Historical Portraits (Oxford), 

190, 234ff. 
Histriomastix, 397 
History of Cardenio, by 

Fletcher and Shakespeare, 

119 
Hodgets, John, 40 
Holinshed, 392 
Holland, Aaron, 318 
Holland, Elizabeth, 62, 66 
Holland, Hugh, 98, 148, 149 
Holme-Pierrepoint, 16, 17 
{Upon an) Honest Man's For- 
tune, 8, 144, 176, 215, 220, 

236, 238, 280, 378 
Hoskins, John, his Convivium 

Philosophicum, I46ff., 149, 

203 
Howard, Henry, 349, 361 



Howard of Walden, Lord, 321 

Howe, Josias, 209 

Hughes, Thomas, Misfortunes 

of Arthur, 35 
Humorous Lieutenant, The, 

2z6, 243, 26s, 268, 278, 279, 

401-403 
Huntingdon, see Hastings 
hyperbole, 285 
Hypercritica, Bolton, 194 

Idea, the Shepheard's Garland, 

Eglogs, Drayton, 42 
// You Know Not Me, You 

Know Nobody, 331 
He of Guls, 159 
Imogen, Innogen, 392 
Inderwick, F. A., Calendar of 

Inner Temple Records, 30, 

131, et passim 
In Laudem Authoris, 40, 134 
Inner Temple, 18, 29, 33, 37, 

99, I24ff., 129, 131, 137, 138, 

139, 162 
Inner Temple Records, 29-31, 

131, 139, ^i passim 
Inns of Court and Chancery, 

29, 32, Z7, 118, 135, 145, et 

passim 
Insatiate Countess, The, 399 
Island Princess e. The, 236, 278 
Isley, Ursula, wife of the 

dramatist, 175-178, 180, 

187 
Isleys, the, 175-177, 186 
iteration, 259 

James I, Progress of 1603, 44; 

60, 74, 77, 91, 161, 162, 164, 

i6s, 372 
joint-plays, 252ff., 40off., etc. 
Jones, Inigo, 125, 145, 147, 148 



INDEX 



437 



Jonson, Ben, 3, 5, 9, 24. 32, 52, y2, 
82, 84, 8s, 86, 96, 97, 98, 
99, 100, loi, 102, 103, no, 
III, ii4ff., 122, 124, I32ff., 
136, 137, 142, 145, 148, 149, 
150, 152, 153, 154, 157, 169, 
170, 174, 182, 185, 191, 193, 
199, 200, 201, 205, 209, 211, 
213, 214, 231, 272, 322, 327, 
328, 329, 334, 335, 2>Z^, 342, 
343, 369, 411, 412 

Jovius, Paulus, 78 

Juby, Edward, 114 

Julius Caesar, 108, no 

Ker (Carr) Robert, Earl of 
Somerset, 74, 75, 179, 372 

Keysar, Robert, 80, 81, 315, 
318, 320, 323 

Kinwelmersh, Francis, 35 

King, Edward, Milton's ' Ly- 
cidas,' 24 

King and No King, A, 7, 8, 37, 

92, 109-110, 112, 121, 145, 
146, 174, 205, 237, 239, 241, 
252, 255, 258, 259, 273, 275, 
288, 293, 294, 307, 308, 311, 
346, 361-367, 378, 381, 382, 
384, 386-396, 400, 401, 411, 

414, 415 

King Lear, 159, 283 

King's Players, the, 38, 97, 102, 
103, 105, 109, no, 114, 119, 
120, 122, 124, 136, 211, 306, 
315, 316, 343, 345, 349, 360 

King's Bench, 138 

Kirkham, Edward, 118, 136 

Knight of Malta, The, 211, 236, 
238, 239, 378 

Knight of the Burning Pestle, 
The, 7, 41, 73, 79-81, 88, 

93, 100, 112, 115, 171, 204, 



237, 240, 273, 285, 310-332, 

378, 382, 385, 407, 413, 414 
Knight of the Burning Sword, 

The, 325 
Knight of the Sunne and His 

Brother Rosicleer, The, 327 
Knole Park, Kent, 70, 187, et 

passim 
Knowles, Sheridan, 359 
Koeppel, E., 117 
Kyd, Thomas, 26, 200, 204, 285, 

2B6, 313 



Lady Elizabeth's Players, 314 
Lamb, Charles, 233, 397 
Langbaine, G., 233, 332 
Lansdowne MS., 200 
Lames of Candy, The, 236, 238, 

378 
Leland, John, Itinerary, 10, 11, 

154, 160, et passim 
Lennard, Sir Henry, twelfth 

Lord Dacre, 70, 71, 178 
Leonhardt, B., 117 
Letter to Ben Jonson, 97-101, 

193, 251, 337 
Lincoln's Inn, 32, I24f., 135, 

136, 145, 148 
Lisle, Sir George, 204, 231, 361 
Little French Lawyer, The, 

236 
Lodge, Thomas, 159. 392 
Love Lies a-Bleeding, 103, etc., 

see Philaster 
Lovell, John, Lord, 22, 23 
Lovers Progresse,. The, 236 
Loves Cure, 236, 240, 305, 378 
Love's Labour's Lost, 392, 412 
Loves Pilgrimage, 236, 237, 

238, 378 
Lowin, John, 122, 214, 402 



438 



INDEX 



Loyall Subject, The, 211, 236, 

243, 268, 278, 410 
Luce, Morton, 393 
Lyly, John, 26, 200 

Macaulay, G. C, Francis Beau- 
mont, a Critical Study; 
Beaumont and Fletcher in 
Camb. Hist. Bug. Lit. 89, 

108, 117, 226, 234, 252, 265, 
287, 300, 302, 305, 308, 312, 
ZZ7, 374, 409 

Macbeth, 286 
Macready, W. C, 359 
Mad Lover, The, 236, 279 
Maide in the Mill, The, 236 
Maides Tragedy, The, 6, 7, 107- 

109, 117, 121, 124, 159, 230, 
232, 234, 237, 239, 240, 241, 
252, 255, 258, 273, 285, 288, 
289, 292, 308, 346, 349-359, 
361, 378, 381, 382, 384, 386- 
395, 398, 400, 405, 407, 411, 
414, 415 

Malcontent, The, 399 

Malone, Edmund, 233 

Manners, Lady Katharine (Vil- 
liers), Duchess of Bucking- 
ham, 159, 162, 163 

Manners, Roger, see Rutland 

Manningham, John, 32 

Manverses, the, 16-18 

Manwood, Thomas, 136 

Mari coccu, battu et content, 
Te, 334 

Markham, Lady, 165 

Marlowe, Chrjstopher, S3^ 194, 
200, 201, 204, 285, 286, 313, 
326, 362 

Marston, John, 73, 88, 102, 122, 
32S, 329, 396, 399, 412 

Martin, Richard, 99, 149 



Mary, Queen of Scots, 24, 65, 
179 

Masque of the Inner Temple, 
The, 119, 124-139, 145, 208, 
225, 228, 236, 246, 247, 248, 
249, 250, 259, 281, 385 

Masque of Flowers, see Flow- 
ers 

Masque of Ulysses and Circe, 
The, 133 

Massinger, Philip, 6, 8, 98, 119, 
122, 136, 168, 169, 201, 203, 
211, 214, 219, 226, 228, 234, 
241, 265, 272, 300, 305, 306, 

326, 340, 379, 400, 407; au- 
thorities upon his style, 
300 

Mayne, Jasper, 361 
McKerrow, R. B., 271, 272 
Measure for Measure, 391, 392, 

393 
Menaechmus, 35 
Menaphon, 159 

Merchant Taylors' School, 86 
Mermaid Tavern, the, 97-99, 

114, 145, 148, 149, 193, 203 
Merry Wives, The, no 
Metamorphosis of Tobacco, 38 
Microcosmographie, 198 
Middle Temple, the, 118, I24f., 

138 
Middleton, Thomas, 102, 122, 

201, 211, 239, 272, 305, 324, 

399, 407, 412 
Midsummer-Night's Dream, A, 

392 
Milner, J. D., 218 
Mirror for Magistrates, The, 

Mirror of Knighthood, The, 

327, 329 
'Mirtilla,' 43, 45, 187 



INDEX 



439 



Miseries of Enforced Marriage, 

The, 324 
Misfortunes of Arthur, The, 

35 

Mitre Inn, The, 94, 145, 146 

Monsieur Thomas, y2), 84, 88- 
94, 168, 237, 243, 245, 247, 
263, 383 

Montaigne, 22^ 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wort- 
ley, 25 

Monteagle, Lord, 50, 51, 57 

Montemayor, 392 

Moore, Sir Thomas, 194 

More, Paul Elmer, 272f., 35Sf., 
397ff., 415 

Morris, John, Life of Father 
Gerard, 46-59, et passim 

Mosely, Humphrey, The Sta- 
tioner to the Readers, 130, 
206, 216, 217 

Morte d'Arthur, 2>V 

Mountjoy, Christopher, 114, 
118 

Moyses in a Map of his Mir- 
acles, 42 

Mucedorus, 331 

Much Ado About Nothing, 
no, 344, 390, 392 

Mulcaster, Richard, 86, 318 

Munday, Anthony, 327 

Murch, H. S., ed. of The 
Knight, 324, 330 

Murray, J. T., Eng. Dram. 
Comp., 104, 105, 315, 368 

Muses' Elizium, 44, 187, 191 



Narrative of Father Gerard, 

47, 54 
Nashe, Thomas, 154, 204 
Nevill, Sir Henry, the elder, 



145-148, 153; the younger, 
145, 146 

Nice Valour, The, 97, 98, 216, 
2z6, 238, 378 

Nichols, J., Collections, Hist. 
Leicestershire, Progresses 
of Queen Elizabeth, Prog- 
resses of James I, 12, 13, 
19, 65, 131, 186, et passim 

NimphaUs, Drayton, 187, 191 

Night Walker, The, 22,7 

Noble Gentleman, The, 236, 
2Z2>, 378 

Northumbrian MS. of Bacon, 
146 

Norton, Thomas, Gorboduc, yj 



oaths, 275, 286 

Oath of Allegiance, The, 60, 164 

Obstinate Lady, The, 377 

Ode to Sir William Skipworth, 

215 

Oldfield, Mrs., 377 

Old Wives Tale, The, 326 

Oliphant, E. H., 83, 117, 234, 

241, 252, 270, 272, 281, 300, 

302, 304, 309, 312, 337, 338, 

340, 374 
On the Tombs in Westminster, 

183 
optatives, 275, 286 
Orlando Furioso, 334 
Ostler (Osteler, Ostler, Osier), 

Wm., 122, 342, 343 
Othello, 79, no 
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 27, 

153, 179 
Ovid, 38, 41, 142 



Palamon and Arcite, 32 



440 



INDEX 



'Palmeo/ 43, 187 

Palmerin de Oliva, Palmerin 
of England, 313, 325, 327» 

329 
Pandosto, 159, 392 
Parisitaster, 88 
Pastoralists, the, 124, 132-144. 

Pastorals, Ambrose Philips, 
186 

Paul's Players, the, 73, 83, 102, 
315, 316, 318 

Peele, George, 326, 329 

Pepys, Samuel, 218, 358, 366 

Percy, Thomas, 49-52 

Pericles, 118, 344, 345, 3^7, 
391, 392, 393, 394 

Persons, Father, 46, 47 

Pettus, Sir John, 231 

Philaster, 6, 7, 7^, 88, 92, 96, 
97, 101-107, 109, 116, 121, 
159, 191, 230, 237, 239, 240, 
241, 252, 253, 258, 259, 260, 
261, 273, 285, 294, 297, 298, 
302, 307, 308, 311, 312, 329, 
337,341-349,361,378,381, 
382, 384, 386-396, 412, €t 
passim. 

Philip III of Spain, 371, 372 

Philips, Sir Ambrose, 186 

Phillipps de Lisles, the present, 
186 

Phillipps, J. O. Halliwell, 342 

Phillips, Sir Robert, 149 

Philo Sophia Epicurea Demo- 
critiana, 203 

Pierce, Edward, 315 

Pierrepoint, Anne, mother of 
the dramatist, 16-18, 25 

Pierrepoint, Sir Henry, 16, 18, 

45 
Pierrepoint, Robert, first Earl 



of Kingston, 17, 27, 38, 164, 
179 
Pilgrim, The, 236, 278 
Plautus, 35, 197, 230 
Plutus, 125 

Poems, The, of Beaumont, see 
Beaumont, Francis, The 
Poems 
Poems Lyrick and Pastoral, 

Drayton, 42 
Poetaster, The, 149, 342 
Poets' Corner, i82ff., 192, 196, 

199 
Pole, Katherine, 14 
Portraits of Beaumont, Nune- 
ham, 181, 190, 192; Rob- 
inson's engraving of 1840, 
190, 217; Knole, 190, 192, 
217; G. Vertue, 217; Evans, 
217; Walker and Cocker- 
ell, 218 
Portraits of Fletcher, Knole: 
Blood, 217; G. Vertue, 217; 
Evans, 217; Robinson, 217; 
Walker, 218 ; Earl of Clar- 
endon's, 218; Janssen, 219 
' Prince of Misrule,' 34 
* Prince of Portpoole,' 34 
Prince's Players, the, 114 
Praise of Hemp-seed, The, 199 
Princess Elizabeth's Players, 

336 
Prophetesse, The, 236 
prose-test, the, 259 
Prynne, William, 397, 399 
Purple Island, The, Phineas 
Fletcher, 64 

Queen Anne's Players, 314, 

318 
Queene of Corinth, The, 211, 

236 



INDEX 



441 



Queen Henrietta's Players, 314 
Queen's Revels' Children, the, 
80, 81, S3, 86, 87, 89, 96, 
102, 103, III, 114, 122, 124, 
304, 305, 314, 315, 317, 319, 
332, 335-337, 342, 343, 360, 
368-370, 373 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 36, 100, 
138, 149, 155, 165, 179 

Randolph, Thomas, 150 

Red Bull Theatre, the, 313, 
318 

' Remond ' and ' Dondon,' 
query, Fletcher and Beau- 
mont, 139-144 

Reveshy Sword-Play, 34 

Reynolds, Henry, 132, 201 

Reynolds, John, 147 

rhyme, 250 

' Ricardo and Viola' 338, 383 

Richard III, 14, 22 

Rigg, J. M, I3ff., 19 

Rollo, 237 

' romance,' 279, 394, et passim 

Romeo and Juliet, 286, 389 

Rosalynde, 159 

Rosenbach, A. S. W., 333 

Rossiter, Philip, 103, 315, 3i6, 
319, 370 

Routh, H. v., 328 

Rowley, William, 211, 239, 272, 
314, 407, 412 

Royall King and Loyall Sub- 
ject, 399 

Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, 
211, 237, 243, 244, 249, 263, 
268, 269, 280, 403 

run-on lines, 174, 250, 255, 
258ff., 261 ff. 

Rutland, Roger Manners, fifth 
Earl, 48, 152-155; Francis, 



sixth Earl, 162, 163; Eliza- 
beth, Countess of, see Sid- 
ney, Elizabeth ; Cicely 
(Tufton), Countess of, 
163 
Rymer, Thomas, 233, 354, 355, 
397 

Sackville, Edward, fourth Earl 

of Dorset, 191 
Sackville, Lionel, seventh Earl 

of Dorset, 191, 217 
Sackville, Richard, third Earl 

of Dorset, 70, 179, 180, 191 
Sackville, Thomas, first Earl of 

Dorset, 37, 65-71 
Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, 

39, 40, 41, 134, 141, 142 
Sampson, M. W., 386 
Sannazarro, 392 
Sarmiento de Acuiia, Don 

Diego, Count Gondomar, 

37^-373 
Schelling, F. E., 234, 295 
Schevill, Rudolph, 322 f., 324, 

330, 332 
Scornful Ladie, The, 7, 100, 

111-113, 171, 180, 232, 237, 

238, 239, 240, 273, 368-378, 

382, 383, 396 
Scourge of Folly, The, 104, 

342, 343, 344 
Sea Voyage, The, 236 
' Second Maiden's Tragedy,' 

334 

Sejanus, 148, 411 

Selden, John, 99, 137, 149, 169, 

170 
Semphill, Sir James; 59-60 
Seneca, 37 
Session of the Poets, The, 

Suckling, 137 



442 



INDEX 



Seyliard, Mrs., see Elizabeth 
Beaumont 

Seyliard, Thomas, 45, 159, 176, 
187; see also Beaumont, 
Elizabeth 

Shadwell, Thomas, 96 

Shakespeare, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12, 23, 
26, 32, 33, 35, 79, 83, 92, 98, 
loi, 102, 103, 105, 106, 108, 
no, III, ii4ff., 118, 122, 
124, 136, 145, 154, 159, 182, 
184, 193, 194, 199, 201, 211, 
214, 219, 272, 280, 283, 286, 
309, 326, 329, 330, 343, 344, 
386ff., 387ff., 389, 396, 401, 
41 Iff. 

Shakespeare, and Beaumont, 
114-118 

Shakespeare, and his company 
of players, loi-iii, 118^ 
120, 145, 316 

Shakespeare, Was he influenced 
by Beaumont and Fletch- 
er? 386-395 

Shaw, Knights of England, 17, 
45, et passim 

Shelton, Thomas, transl. of 
Don Quixote, 120, 321-331, 

335 
Shepheard's Calendar, 44 
Shepherdess, The, John Beau- 
mont, 159, 163 
Shepherd's Hunting, The, 135 
Shepherd's Pipe, The, 134, I35, 

139 
Shirley, James, 150, 206, 208, 

229 
Sicelides, Phineas Fletcher, 64 
Sidney, Elizabeth Manners, 
Countess of Rutland, 133, 

139, 150-159, 165, 172-174, 
180, 287 



Sidney, Sir Philip, 26, 37, 106, 
III, 133, 142, 143, i5off., 
158, 159, 166, 197, 201, 
392 

Sidney, Mary Herbert, Countess 
of Pembroke, 42, 133, 153 

Silent Woman, The, 120, 413, 
see Epicoene 

Skipwith, Sir William, 45, 166, 

215 

Spanish Curate, The, 236, 271 
Slye, Christopher, 103 
Smith, L. T., 11, 200 
Southampton, see Wriothesley 
Spedding, James, 36 
Speght's Chaucer, 24, 178 
Spenser, Edmund, 24, 44, 182, 

193, 199, 200 
Stanhope, Philip, Earl of 

Chesterfield, 165 
Stanley, Thomas, second Earl 

of Derby, 14 
Stanley, Thomas, 350, 374 
Stapleton, Miles Thomas, 12 
State Papers Domestic, Cal- 
endar of, 15, S1-61, 63, 127, 
129, 146, 162, 164, 177, et 
passim 
Stationers' Registers, 84, 121, 

237, et passim 
Stationer to the Readers, The 

Mosely, 206 
'Stella,' 166 
Stephens, John, 202 
Stiefel, A. L., 89 
Stourton, Lord, 50 
Stratford upon Avon, 118 
Stuart, Lady Arabella, 17, 179 
Suckling, Sir John, 137 
Sullivan, Mary, 127, 128 
Sundridge, 175-180, 377, et 
passim 



INDEX 



443 



Supposes, The Ariosto — George 

Gascoigne, 34, 35 
suspense, 389 
Symonds, J. A., 386 
Swinburne, Algernon, 4, 7, 8, 

190, 2ZZ, 397 
Sympson and Seward, 233 



Talbots, the, Earls of Shrews- 
bury, 14, 17 

Tamer Tamed, The, 83, 236, 
279, et passim. The Wom- 
an's Prize 

Taming of the Shrew, The, 35, 

83 
Tasso, Aminta, 132 
Taylor, John, 198 
Taylor, Joseph, 122, 214, 332, 

335ff., 402 
Tempest, The, no, 283, 344, 

386, 387, 390, 391, 393 
Tennyson, Alfred, 183 
Theobald, Lewis, 2:^7, 359 
Thersites, 326 
Thierry and Theodoret, 8, 109, 

237, 238, 240, 378, 386, 387, 

395 

Thorndike, A. H., Influence of 
Beaumont and Fletcher on 
Shakespeare, editions of 
Maides Tragedy and Phil- 
aster, 7s, 83, 84, 105, no, 
234, 241, 300, 303, 304, 305, 
316, 318, 349, 350, 380, 386f. 

Thornhurst, Sir Stephen, 69 

' Thyrsis,' 43, 187 

Time Poets, The, 203 

Timon, 389 

'Tis a Pity, She's a Whore, 
412 

Titles of Honour, 137 



Tombs in Westminster, On 

the, 183 
To the Apparition of his Mis- 

tresse calling him to Eliz- 

ium, 170 
To the Honoured Countess 

of , 152 

To the Memory of my beloved, 

the Author, Mr. William 

Shakespeare, and what he 

hath left us, 200 
Tourneur, Cyril, 272 
Townshend, Sir Robert, 167 
Tragedies of the Last Age, 

The, 354 
Tragedy of Bonduca, The, see 

Bonduca 
Travails of Three English 

Brothers, The, 81, 313, 

314, 317, 318, 321, 325, 

331 
Tresham, Francis, 48, 50, 52, 

57, 58 
Tresham, Mary, 46 
Tresham, Sir Thomas, 46 
triplet, the, 259 
Triumph of Death, The, 270, 

301-305, 389 
Triumph of Honour, The, 251, 

301-305, 389 
Triumph of Love, The, 8, 251, 

301-305, 388 
Triumph of Time, The, 270, 

301-305 
True Tragedy of Richard, 

Duke of York, The, 326 
(On the) True Forms of Eng- 
lish Poetry, 184 
Twelfth Night, 32, 117, 345, 

390, 392, 393 
Tzw Gentlemen of Verona, 

The, 345, 390, 392, 412 



444 



INDEX 



Two Noble Kinsman, The, 5, 
119, 2Z7 



Underwood, John, 342, 343 

Upham, A. H., 90 

Upon an Honest Man's For- 
tune, see Honest Man's 
Fortune 

Upon the Lines and Life of 
Shakespeare, Hugh Hol- 
land, 148 



{Tragedy of) Valentinian, The, 
6, 8, 211, 27,6, 287, 400, 410 

Vanbrugh, Sir John, 188 

Variorum Edition of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, 190, 
217, 234, 271, 346, 367, 413, 
et passim 

Vaux, Anne, alias Mrs. Per- 
kins, 46-59, passim, 164 

Vaux, Eleanor, alias Mrs. Jen- 
nings, 46, 47, 57 

Vaux, Mrs., Elizabeth Roper, 
46-56, 138, 164 

Vauxes, the, cousins of the 
dramatist, and the Gun- 
powder Plot, 46-61, i64f. 

verse-endings, double, triple, 
etc., 243 

verse-tests, 243!?., 246ff. 

versification of Fletcher and 
of Beaumont, 243-259 

Very Woman, A, :z'jy 

Villiers, Christopher, 161, 162 

Villiers, George, Duke of 
Buckingham, 19, 60, 148, 
159-164, 185 

Villiers, John, 161-162, 164 

Volpone, 72, 82, 92, 411 



von Wurzbach, Wolfgang, 334 

Walker, Henry, 119 

Walkley, Thomas, 145 

Wallace, C. W., Shakspere's 
Money Interest in the 
Globe, etc., Century Maga., 
114, 118, 314, 315, 316, 319 

Waller, A. R., and Glover, A., 
editors of Camb. Eng. 
Class., Beaumont and 
Fletcher, 244, et passim; 
Waller, ed. of The Scorn- 
ful Ladie, 2>77 

Waller, Edmund, 150, 184, 231, 

349, 359, 374 
Walpole, Henry, 16, 48 
Ward, Sir Adolphus William, 

Hist. Eng. Dram. Lit., 3, 

91, 216, 234, 308, 377, 397 
Warwick, Richard, Earl of, 14 
Webster, John, 102, 122, 211, 

396, 399, 411 
Wenman, Sir Richard, 53, 138 
Wenman, Thomas. 134, 137, 

138 
West, John, 149 
White Devil, The, 122, 399 
Whitefriars Theatre, the, 96f., 

I02f., 122, 304, 315, 316, 343, 

360, 369 
Whitehall, I25f. 
White Webbs, 52, 56 
Wife for a Month, A, 236, 

263, 275, 278, 400, 403-406, 

410 
Wild-Goose Chase, The, Dedi- 
cation, 214, 237, 279 
Wilkins, George, 314, 324, 325 
Wills, James, 188 
Wilson, Arthur, 160 
Winter, Henry and Thomas, 

49-52, 57 



INDEX 



445 



Winter's Tale, The, no, 159, 
283, 344, 386, 387, 390, 391, 
393 

Wit at Severall Weapons, 236, 
22>7, 378 

Wither, George, I34f., 138, 142 

Wit Without Money, 237, 279 

Woman-Hater, The, 7, 40, 41, 
59, 72-79, 80, 82, 93, 100, 
112, 115, 130, 171, 237, 239, 
240, 250, 258, 273, 281, 285, 
297, 305, 307-311, 350, 378, 
382, 385, 407, 412 

Woman is a Weather-Cocke, 
87, 320-305 

Woman's Prise, The, or The 
Tamer Tamed, 83, 236, 279 

{To Any) Woman that hath been 
no Weather-cocke, 304 



Women Pleas'd, 236, 279 
Wood, Anthony, 32 
Wordsworth, W., 20, 21, 25 
Wright, Christopher and John, 

45H52 
Wright, Thomas, 13 
Wriothesley, Henry, third Earl 

of Southampton, 154, 184 
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 175 

Xenophon's Cycropccdeia, 109 

Ye-test, the 271-273, 309, 371, 

374-375 
Yorkshire Tragedy, The, 303 
Your Five Gallants, 324 

Zola, 404 



